Three-day－old Oskar Lunde sleeps in a small bed at an Estonian(爱沙尼亚) hospital.
Across the room, his father turns on a laptop computer. "Now we will register our child, "Andrei Lunde says as he lifts his identification card into the card reader. His wife, Olga, looks on. And just like that, Oskar is Estonia's newest citizen. No paper. No time spent standing in a line.
Estonia has launched a project to make government administration completely digital. The goal is to reduce the size of the government work force, open up the decision-making process and fuel economic growth.
Need medicine? Reach for a computer and send an email or text message to a doctor. Need help from the local government? Click on a link to the government websites…
Estonia has created a system that supports electronic authentication(身份验证) and digital signatures. It provides paperless communications for both the government and private industry.
However, there are a few things that one cannot do electronically in Estonia: marry, end a marriage or buy and sell property. That is only because the government has decided it is very important to show up in person for some big life events. When Estonia declared independence from the former Soviet Union in 1991, it had to build a new economy. Government leaders looked for an industry where the country could compete. They decided on information technology and the Internet.
When the poor country needed to replace a 1930s phone system, former President Toomas Hendrik Ilves rejected the offer of a free analog(模拟) system from Finland and argued for a digital one.
Last year, information and communications made up 5.9 percent of the economy. The government hopes to increase that figure with an "e-residency" program that lets businessmen around the world register their businesses in Estonia, thus gaining a presence in the European Union. More than 51, 000 people from 167 countries have registered at a cost of only 100 euros, or＄114 each.
