The Republic of Estonia is the first country to offer e-Residency— a transnational digital identity available to everyone in the world interested in managing a location-independent business. E-Residency enables secure and convenient digital services that facilitate credibility and trust online.
Innovation Summary
Innovation Overview
As of 2016, E-Residency makes it possible to:
• Digitally sign documents and contracts
• Verify the authenticity of signed documents
• Encrypt and transmit documents securely
• Establish an Estonian company online and administer it from anywhere in the world
• Conduct e-banking and remote money transfers
• Declare Estonian taxes online
• Take advantage of a marketplace of services specifically for e-residents
E-residents receive a smart IDcard (eID) which enables secure digital authentication and the digital signing of documents. These are legally equal to handwritten signatures and face-to-face identification in Estonia, the EU and between partners upon agreement anywhere in the world.
The programme provides a gateway to another country’s digital infrastructure and regulatory framework, in this case Estonia’s, allowing people to become active players in the global economy by conducting business regarding of their place of residence or nationality.
Estonia has been a pioneer in the provision of digital public services to its own citizens. E-Residency uses the Estonian infrastructure system that took more than 20 years to mature and reach its current state. However, to be implemented, the programme still required amendments to legislation and the ability to find consensus inside the government. Thus, to replicate this there needs to be strong national e-ID, right legal framework and willingness to change in place!
E-Residency is still in its public beta phase, which means that everybody is invited to apply and help the e-Residency by giving feedback. E-residency and its services and processes have been built and iterated based on feedback from the target users.
Innovation Description
What Makes Your Project Innovative?
The Estonian government launched e-Residency to make Estonia bigger: to grow the country’s digital economy and market with new customers, thereby sparking innovation and attracting new investments. e-Residency seeks to improve the efficiency of Estonia’s public and private networks by using the already existing infrastructure while providing a transnational digital identity available to anyone in the world.
Innovation Development
Collaborations & Partnerships
e-Residency is result of an exceptional cross-governmental collaboration between the Ministry of the Interior and its IT and Development Centre, Police and Border Guard Board, Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Estonian embassies and consulates worldwide, Ministry of Finance, Information System Authority, Office of the President of the Republic of Estonia, Government Office of the Republic of Estonia, Ministry of Economic Affairs and Comm., Enterprise Estonia and others.
Users, Stakeholders & Beneficiaries
Businesses, Civil Society, foreigner
Innovation Reflections
Results, Outcomes & Impacts
E-Residency has facilitated business activity for foreigners in Estonia. As of the end of July 2016, the programme has received almost 13,000 applications from 132 countries. More than 840 companies have been created by e-residents and more than 1,780 companies are owned by them.
Conditions for Success
The e-Residency programme has evolved not as an isolated phenomenon, but as a result of a succession of concrete policy decisions that Estonian policymakers took over the last twenty-five years. Moreover, these actors and their decisions were embedded in, shaped, and constrained by a preexisting technical infrastructure and e-government ecosystem without which the e-Residency project would not have been possible. Estonia has been a pioneer in the provision of digital public services to its own citizens. It is one of the most advanced societies in the world — an incredible success story that grew out of a partnership between a forward-thinking government, a proactive ICT sector and a switched-on, tech-savvy population. Estonia’s e-ID system—by far the most highly-developed national ID card system in the world—and the country’s data exchange layer for information systems—X-Road— are the pillars of Estonia’s technological infrastructure.
Lessons Learned
As the first initiative of its kind in the world, e-Residency has required extraordinary efforts from the team and from different ministries and agencies across the Estonian government to develop and improve the program. The main lesson is that all of this takes leadership and political commitment, but also dedicated everyday staff – then changes become everyday practices and disruptions are made. Additionally, the key learning from trying to operate a programme like a startup in government setting is that it can be done – really be agile, user-centric, scaling on the go. The only hardship is that financial resources don’t scale as fast under state budgeting cycles, potentially limiting agility. To counter that, there has to be a possibility to get more resources in throughout the year as times arise – from state budget or externally.
Status:
- Diffusing Lessons - using what was learnt to inform other projects and understanding how the innovation can be applied in other ways
Innovation provided by:
Date Published:
2 August 2016