The Current - With online divorce, Estonia goes fully digital

Episode Date: February 3, 2025

Estonia has digitized all government services, from voting to paying taxes and even getting divorced. We look at what it would take to bring that online efficiency to Canada.

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and perhaps find some of that information that's so important in these really tricky times. So thanks for all of that. Appreciate it. And on to today's show. I use my electronic ID card to access public and private services online like filing my taxes and checking my son's progress in school. My husband has used his card to register his new business, my father to apply for a farming subsidy, and my mother to view her health records at home. And I can pick up her medications using my card. So our lives have become so much easier.

It's an ad for e-Estonia, which powers all government services in that country. The small Baltic nation hit a big milestone at the end of last year. Its government services are now 100% digital. Every service that government offers can now be done online. The one holdout was divorce, but as of December that too can be done more or less with a click of a button, you're divorced online. Meanwhile, in Canada, it can be a headache just

to get your driver's license renewed. Ryan Androsoff knows some of these headaches firsthand. He was co-founder of the Canadian Digital Service, which is an organization within the Canadian government that helps digitize and improve government services. He's co-founder of the Canadian Digital Service, which is an organization within the Canadian government that helps digitize and improve government services. He's now vice president of learning and

leadership at the Institute on Governance. It's a not-for-profit think tank based in Ottawa. He's in our Ottawa studio. Ryan, good morning. Matt, good morning. Great to be with you. Good to have you here. This is really interesting in part because of

what is being not just promised, but executed by the Estonian government. Help me understand this. There's no lineups, no phone calls. Every single service that the government of Estonia offers is now online? Absolutely. You know, Estonia has been, I think,

really viewed as a global leader on what people might call digital government. And it has been a concerted effort for 20 to 30 years now where they have said kind of a cross-partisan consensus in Estonia to say this needs to be a priority and as a small country, this is really where they wanted to differentiate themselves in terms of saying we are going to be the best, most digitally connected, digitally accessible government in the world. And so it's everything.

I mean, I mentioned divorce, but what are some of the other things? It sounds obvious, but what are some of the other things that you have access to online now? I mean, it's everything from being able to sign legal documents to being able to access social benefits to being able to vote in elections. I was years ago, I was at a conference in Slovakia and I was with an Estonian official. We were literally in a taxi cab going to the airport together and they were having elections happening and he

voted from the taxi cab from his laptop. I mean that is the degree of digital interconnectedness that they've been able to build by having that infrastructure in place. As you understand it and as somebody who has tried to do that here in this country, how was that country able to build an online system that lets you both bank and get married and divorced and get your health records as somebody who has tried to do that here in this country, how was that country able to build an online system that lets you both bank and get married and divorced and get your health records and vote from a taxicab?

So on the technical side, the big innovation that I think Estonia put a lot of focus on too in the early years was the data infrastructure so that they could actually be able to connect services to validate people's identities and allow them to have that kind of seamless interaction. It's a platform they call X-Road. And X-Road essentially is this layer of data protocols and software that let all the different systems, both from the public sector but also the private sector as well, all be able to talk to each other.

And from a citizen perspective, what that means is every Estonian has an EID card. Originally it was a physical card with a chip in it. These days I think they've largely moved to kind of a fully online type of credential that would sit on your smartphone. But that lets you essentially kind of plug into the Estonian digital ecosystem. And so whether it's everything from accessing government services to doing your online banking to getting a library rental from the local library, all of those are using the same data protocols on the back end. So that technical piece has been a really important fundamental building block that

has led Estonia to be able to build these very integrated digital services on top of it. How do you go about trusting, telling people that they can trust having a digital ID? This has been the subject of great concern and more in this country where people are worried about if I have one ID, what does that mean for who I am? That the government might be able to control me, that other people might be able to hack in. How do you convince people that this is a good thing?

Yeah, absolutely. And I would say it's one of the challenges, frankly, that we have in Canada right now, is we haven't put in place that single digital identity. And part of that is just the nature of our structure of government, right? We have a federated system. The provinces in most cases are the ones who actually hold people's vital identity information. And there have been fits and starts, and I would say British Columbia is probably the leader in Canada right now in terms of putting in place that digital ID, but you're right it's become frankly a bit of a political issue now where people are worried about Big Brother. I think what's

interesting about it is if you talk to the Estonians what they would say is they actually feel more secure in knowing what information government has about them because as an Estonian because you've got this integrated data system you essentially can log into a portal and see all the information that government has about you, but also very interestingly who's accessed your data most recently. So it gives you as a citizen some actual insight into how government's using your data. Right now here in Canada, you largely have no idea what data your government has on you. You'd have to file a tip request to try to get access to it, and so I think the interesting part of this story is the

countries around the world, and Estonia is not the only one, that have moved towards these types of digital identity systems. They've done it I think in a very smart way where, you know, cryptographically they're quite secure, but from a citizen perspective they're actually opening up a bigger window into government so citizens have more transparency on how their data is being used. Let's talk about that security because aside from big brother and the concerns that people might have around government, knowing where you are and what you're doing and what have you, there are real concerns broadly, but if, if, if you're,

all your information is being held by one entity, those concerns would be exacerbated when it comes to hacking and Russia sits right on the border with Estonia. Russian hackers have targeted that country before. Is there not a huge security risk in having everything about you in one place? So it's interesting because this is obviously a key concern for the Estonians. There was an Estonian delegation here in Ottawa back in November, and I was talking with a few members of the government there.

And they were saying, this is top of mind for them right they are next door to Russia there are real security threats in terms of cyber security there was a major cyber security attack in Estonia by Russia in 2007 and they've essentially been under continuous cyber attack since then and they would actually argue that their approach makes things safer in a few ways. So again, on the technical side, it's not one database. You know, we might think about this as, you know, the single digital identity means there's, you know, one big database file sitting somewhere that you can get into. It's actually a distributed ledger. It's not blockchain, but it's a similar

concept to blockchain where the different databases are actually split up by services, but they have a common protocol that lets them talk to each other. So you know, you could kind of think about it as a boat with different compartments. If one gets breached, it doesn't mean the whole boat goes down. The other side of it is the Estonians have also been thinking a lot about, you know, physical security in times of war. And moving to a fully digital infrastructure means that they

actually are able to have copies of their most vital digital records in different physical locations. They actually have this concept of data embassies where the most critical information from the state doesn't have to always just be within the Estonian borders so that if they were facing a real national security threat they would be able to reconstitute and still be able to continue to deliver services. So again, I think they would, you know, perhaps counter-intuitively argue that that move

to fully digital actually makes them more secure in times of crisis. So small country, both in terms of size and population. Aside from that, what is it that they know that we don't? I mean, right now you have Elections Canada officials saying that online voting is not on the radar here. You still need to line up, perhaps for hours, to get a passport renewed. So what do they know that we don't?

Yeah, and you're right. I mean, Estonia gets pointed to a lot, and I think it's worth recognizing that it's small geographically, it's small in population, just a little bit of the size of Ottawa. And I think Estonia also had this benefit of post-Soviet Union, they essentially got a do-over, they got a blank slate to be able to build this. But I will say there's a couple of key lessons, I think, from the Estonian story for Canada. Number one is, you have to get your digital public infrastructure layer right, and that's things like having connectivity, having digital literacy in your population, having digital identity and having cyber payment systems

so that you can actually do those services. I think importantly as well, they've really recognized trust is critical to this. You have to have trust in government and institutions if citizens are going to give you consent to be able to digitize their services. And I think importantly, you know, they would argue that trust isn't about big flashy innovation, it's about small incremental improvements to services that people can see in their real lives and they've spent two plus decades doing that to be able to get to the point where they are today. And I think the last piece of this

which is really important, I think about a lot as we're in an election year, is you need political will behind it. And they have had over two decades worth of governments who had a political consensus to say beyond partisan lines, we think it's important for us for the future of Estonia to digitize our state. And I think here in Canada, these issues are sometimes seen as not being very sexy, they're viewed as kind of under the hood plumbing. And I hope as we move into an election year this year, we can think about if we're going to be serious about this here in Canada, how do we actually build up that political consensus that we have to invest and put energy into modernizing how government works here in 2025? I have to let you go just very briefly. I mean, one of the hurdles here is that there are many places in this country that still don't have high-speed internet.

Yes, and I think that's a basic table stakes for this. I mean, you have to have connectivity, you have to have digital literacy for your population, and these are the types of things that I think we've got to see investment at all levels of government if we're going to be able to catch up to where we need to be. Do you think Canadians want online divorce? I don't know if anybody's particularly asking for that, but I do think Canadians in general want to be able to have government services that feel like they're in 2025 and not in 1985. Well said. Ryan, thank you very much.

Thanks so much, Matt. Ryan Androsoff is vice president of learning and leadership at the Institute on Governance that is a non-profit that is based in Ottawa, a think tank, looking at our digital future perhaps and what that might look like. He was in our Ottawa studio. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.