Estonia, a small Baltic country, proudly holds the title of being the world's first digital nation. There, 99% of interactions with the State can be done online and all citizens' information is online. Mariin Ratnik, Estonia's ambassador to the Kingdom of Spain and the Principality of Andorra, will talk about this country's experience with digitalisation.

What is the Estonian e-Residency program?

Estonia started the e-Residency program in 2014 and is the first and still the only country in the world to implement an e-Residency.

The program allows anyone in the world to obtain an e-Residency card to use Estonia's digital services on the legal territory of Estonia, i.e. the European Single Market, on how to set up companies, and can also make legally binding digital signatures. With this solution, we solve several problems for people living in different countries:

• People from non-EU countries who are interested in becoming a company based in the EU.
• We also have many e-Residents from EU countries, mainly because they want to use a digital signature, because it can be more expensive to create and run a company, in their country of origin, or more bureaucracy, slower.

The E-Residency program is perfect for people who want to start a business, either for their freelance work or to create something bigger. However, a digital ID is not a physical ID or a travel document, visa or citizenship document, and does not include a photograph; does not automatically guarantee tax residence in Estonia, nor does it.

Estonia has the merit of being the country of the European Union with the most advanced electronic administration. What are the keys to your digital administration?

• First of all, digitization is not just a matter of technology. In principle, digital leadership is needed.
• Internet access (established as a social right in Estonia) and computers/machines are required to access the services.
• In addition, short and simple laws and online services are essential. Laws should be understandable and accessible to the general population, and easy to implement and enforce by government authorities and private sector companies.
• Transparency must be maintained to maintain the trust of society. Transparency helps prevent data silos and corruption within state authorities.
• Shared platforms, a secure data exchange highway, such as X-Road.
• The design of the service must focus on the citizen/user.
• Finally, the Estonian government has always been open to public-private partnerships. The argument for this is very simple: the government sets some parameters and expectations of the service, but leaves the execution to specialists in different fields, generally found in the private sector.

Ireland and Estonia have their economic recovery levels ahead of other EU countries. Is digitization the key?

It is difficult to comment on the reasons for Ireland, but for Estonia digitization is certainly an integral part. It has been quite easy for Estonia to get used to confinement in the sense of the functioning of the State, because we have used digital services a lot in the last 20 years.Therefore, we did not have to make many reinforcements or changes during the pandemic and it was easier to continue with daily life and politics, except for changes in the HORECA sector, like in all other countries. And now many countries, including Spain, want to use our experiences and this has created new opportunities for the private sector as well.

We have also calculated that each employee can save 2 working days, because we use a digital signature. Or we use 380 meters less paper per year, because we have a paperless government. And other estimates say that digital public services earn us 2% of GDP per year. Yes, digitization is clearly the key for us.