How long does it take to divorce in your country? In Estonia, the first step of the uncomfortable undertaking can be made in less than a minute — and even without the undesired spouse being present.
“It takes 45 seconds to get to the point where it says submit the divorce application,” said Luukas Ilves, until last year the Estonian government’s chief information officer
Ilves told DW that divorce application was the last section of public administration that had yet to be digitized, which means the small Baltic state bordering Russia is probably the first fully digitized country in the world.
Even in Estonia, both partners must of course consent to the procedure and be physically present in a meeting with a civil servant who formally ends the marriage. But uptake of the online service is already phenomenal, with about 60% of all divorces in Estonia being initiated via the government’s so-called e-divorce platform since its launch last December.
“We all expect convenience, simplicity and security from digital services in the private sector. Why should government services be any different?” said Ilves.
User-friendliness is key to acceptance
Ilves is the author of a recent studytitled “The End of Bureaucracy,” which he compiled in collaboration with the Friedrich-Naumann-Foundation, which is affiliated to Germany’s Free Democratic Party. The report highlights the differences in digitization policy and what Germany can learn from the more advanced Estonia.
Currently, about 62% of Germans use digital service in administration, while Estonia has an uptake of over 90%, the report said.
Electronic identity verification, for example, is a major issue in the report, as 90% of Estonians use national e-IDs to access government services, compared with less than 10% of Germans. The reason for that is simple, Ilves said. The Estonian software is more user-friendly and provides access to both public and private sector services, including retail banking.
Ilves told DW that until a few years ago, Belgium had used an e-ID technology similar to that in Germany. But it performed poorly, with only 10% to 20% of the population using it.
But ever since the country’s banks and telecommunication operators introduced a user-friendly mobile version that allowed access to both private sector and government services, e-ID uptake has jumped to 80%.
Greater acceptance of digital administration services also helps save taxpayers’ money, the Ilves report states. The administrative cost of collecting taxes in Estonia, for example, are per capita only one-sixth of those in Germany.
Slashing the bureaucratic jungle with OOP
Following general elections in February, the new German government of Chancellor Friedrich Merz has established a Ministry for Digital Transformation and Government Modernisation (BMDS). Its aim is to offer a “comprehensive range of services to provide impetus, initiate cooperation and develop solutions for the public administration of the future.”
Digital industry representatives like Magdalena Zadara have welcomed the decision. Zadara is chief of staff and strategy at the German Digital Service, a government agency that develops and implements software to digitalize administrative processes.
Speaking with DW, she said she was “optimistic” about the new digital ministry because it seeks to digitalize services “end-to-end,” thereby cutting short the seemingly endless journeys through German bureaucracy.
“If I wanted to come to Germany to work from a country outside the EU, I would have to interact with about five to seven different government agencies to get my diploma approved, and they would maybe even ask for the same data.”
One solution to the problem she has in mind is Estonia’s so-called once-only principle (OOP), meaning that citizens and businesses only need to provide information to public authorities once. That data can then be reused and shared internally by all authorities.
OOP is one of the pillars of digital government in Estonia and even codified in law.
Another hallmark of Estonia’s modern administration is the digital signature, which is widely used to sign documents like employment contracts.
Estonian-Russian businessman Kirill Solovjov said he first used the electronic signature when he received a so-called Estonian e-Residency in 2015 — an 11-year-old government-issued digital identity which gives global entrepreneurs remote access to the country’s administrative services.
“Digital signatures also existed in Russia at the time, but I was never able to go through the verification process. In Estonia, you just get the [e-ID] card, plug it in, and it works — it’s magic,” he told DW.
Jump to the top with a ‘Tiger Leap’
The Baltic states — Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania — regained their independence from the former Soviet Union in 1991.
The first thing Estonia did at the time was bring the internet and computers to all of its classrooms and libraries under an education program called Tiger Leap.
In the year 2000, the country of 1.4 million people made another big leap in digitalization when online tax declarations became available and electronic signatures were recognized as legally equivalent to ink signatures.
By 2015, all major public services including health and social services had been fully digitized.
Solovjov said his favorite of all the new services is digital prescriptions. Once a doctor prescribes a medicine, he explains, it automatically ends up in the online registry, and can be accessed from any pharmacy in Estonia — and now even from neighboring Finland.
“You just pull out your ID card … the pharmacist sees exactly what has been prescribed and the different options you have. There’s no deciphering illegible handwriting that’s so common with doctors. It’s easy, safe and fast — plus there’s no tampering,” he said.
Reducing Europe’s digital dependency
Online security is still a major concern for lawmakers in other European countries and the EU Commission in Brussels.
This is why the European tech industry has been calling on lawmakers to reduce Europe’s reliance on American tech giants such as Google, Microsoft and Amazon. They warned the EU Commission against watering down the bloc’s Digital Markets Act as a safeguard against their dominance.
Moreover, they are pushing for developing a so-called EuroStack as a European alternative for technological sovereignty because currently 80% of the technology is imported.
A “stack” refers to a layered architecture of interrelated technology components — hardware, software, networking protocols, and infrastructure — that together create a full digital platform. The EuroStack would include sovereign artificial intelligence, open-source ecosystems, green supercomputing, data commons and a sovereign cloud.
Luukas Ilves is skeptical about the initiative and warns of the high opportunity costs of “reinventing the wheel” in digitalization, especially end-to-end applications.
“No country can be autarkic and fully sovereign in the digital world. In Estonia, we never built an end-to-end Estonia stack but very specific applications and protocols on top of the global technology stack,” he said.
edited by: Uwe Hessler and Kristie Pladson
