Information & Ethics committee  Actually, the first digital data will appear in our system when a baby is born. Already then, as I said, they're a digital citizen of Estonia with a personal identification code, with even a digital ID card, because it can be used for travelling. Parents, of course, are responsible for the data on their babies and can also access their babies' data—for example, medical data—but we have no time to speak about these medical records, the medical systems we have.

Information & Ethics committee  Sometimes I think it was easier for us to build a system by seeing technology as a facilitator. In many democratic governments or democracies, governments are already working very well, so there is no pressure to change the state processes and to use new technology, but I think that because development will go on and the use of technology by citizens will go on, the government therefore also needs to understand that it is time to reconsider how government is operating.

Information & Ethics committee  How to build trust I think is your basic question. It depends on the situation you have in your country. In Estonia, coming from this totalitarian system where Big Brother was watching us all the time, and our own government, it was such a different situation that we didn't even ask if we should be concerned that our own government would misuse our data.

Information & Ethics committee  In Estonia, social media are still very much used in the public sector, but that's basically for communication with citizens. It's not exactly necessary to take from Facebook this information on what people think about the government and government services. We are quite open to direct co-operation with our government, rather than through Facebook.

Information & Ethics committee  Profiling.

Information & Ethics committee  It started earlier. It was a part of Estonian state-building from scratch, actually, after the Soviet occupation. We had this vision and strong political will to build up a modern state and our technology. We had some technologically knowledgeable people, and also politicians who believed that technology could support us in these efforts to modernize and build a really modern state.

Information & Ethics committee  I think the Estonian population was quite positive about this use of technology. Even when we introduced electronic voting, a bigger part of society was not using the Internet, but still people who were not using the Internet were very positive. There wasn't that kind of opposition to the use of technology in Estonia, in my opinion.

Information & Ethics committee  Our experience is that all the countries we are working with are in favour of having good electronic services, but to have a system, the governments should be able to make quite radical changes to the attitudes they have had up to this moment. Electronic government development is not so much about technology or a new information system; it's about innovation, about innovative co-operation among different ministries.

Information & Ethics committee  That's a good question and a very important question. I think what definitely is needed is an electronic identification system. In Estonia, it's based on the unique identifier of citizens. I know that in Canada there is no population register for the whole country, just provincially, so you definitely should think about how you ensure a strong identity for your citizens.

Information & Ethics committee  I think you are referring to my generation, because I'm also a very nice age.

Information & Ethics committee  It's important to understand that the older generation can still learn and have new opportunities. In Estonia, the government also had several special programs to encourage the older generation to take part in the information society. The programs involved looking at the world and sending buses to different villages in Estonia and training older people to use computers, but I think our younger generation, being 100% online, can also provide good assistance to their grandparents.

Information & Ethics committee  I was a member of a constitutional affairs committee when we made the basic decision to start Internet voting. Of course there were concerns, but the e-voting system is constantly upgraded to meet the different risks that may be there. Basically, in the Estonian system there has been no case of some kind of breach or interference in the voting process, and because of that, Estonian citizens are using Internet voting more and more.

Information & Ethics committee  Generally, Estonians use the e-government system, and I think this is basic, because if there is no use of e-government to build it up.... About Internet voting, you can see from these slides that there is constant growth of the number of e-voters. We had local elections last autumn, and about one-third of those people who took part in the elections voted online.

Information & Ethics committee  The Estonian experience is that we can protect private data better in the digital environment than in paper forms. If someone is looking at my paper documents, I cannot get information about that, whereas digital information transactions are visible to citizens. This is a very important fact to consider, actually.

Information & Ethics committee  Generally the information in government databases is not public information. This is personal information, all about me, but in Estonia to get that from the different databases is based on my private identification code. This is very basic for digital identity in Estonia, and also this special number gives me access to different databases that contain data about me.