A few years ago, I visited Estonia. And like some college kid coming back from their first trip abroad, all I could do was gush about Estonia this, Estonia that, well, in Estonia they would say this … and so on. But unlike a college kid, it was not food or culture. What I was obsessed with was governmental databases and citizen user interfaces. (My original post on that is here).
For those who don’t know, when Estonia broke free of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, this country of 1.5 million people, which had rarely run its own affairs, looked at the world around them as they tried to set up a government and said, “why do we need paper?” So everything was digital from Day One.
And with that came the question of how to manage information. Let me quote my younger self:
One great one is that people should only have to enter their information once. You might be wondering what that means. It means that if you have told the government at any point your address, you don’t have to tell it again. If you have told the government your income for 2022, you don’t have to tell it again. If you have told the government that you are married, it is there, everywhere. Does that mean everyone in government knows all this stuff about you? No. Estonians control access to all of this information. It is just that if you have told one part something, you should not expect to have to repeat yourself. Now that I have told you this, you will start to notice how often you have to repeat yourself, not just to governments but to everyone. By simply providing an example, Estonia changes our own expectations of what to expect.
The power of the simple rule:
“No one in government … anywhere … can ask you for any piece of information more than once.”
That meant that government databases were forced to talk to one another. Interoperability was built in. And that infected the private sector. The banking sector could utilise the same protocols and permissions that each citizen retained to access the information they need. It created a substrate of infectious efficiency.
It has been 30 years. Why isn’t this anywhere else? Estonia had things going for it. It was a startup government. But the technologies it has used, both then and ever since, are hardly leading-edge. And not just government. Private organisations can’t get this principle right either. Even with a device like an iPhone, how often do you find yourself typing in the same information again and again? And don’t ask about Universities!
But that puzzle is not what this post is about. Instead, it is about what the world might look like if the Estonian principle were followed and how easy it would be to make things better.
The other day, my colleague, Kevin Bryan, as he is often want to do, decided to see if he could reinvent the US government in an hour. I’m going to shamelessly quote from his LinkedIn post about what we did. Starting with the principles …
Beauty and efficiency matters for govt services. Drives me crazy how low we've set the bar for what services should be. I spent an hour after dinner mocking up what we could have instead. This is what govt should be (in this case, in the US): 1) It should look nice. 2) A user should never type a piece of data twice. 3) Single sign-on, post office kiosks or govt office to confirm personhood. 4) API access. Login to govt services page should be 1-time setup, with phone or key confirm. You can automate the key with an android/iPhone partnership. First setup to confirm identity at post office kiosk/border/govt office. Anyone worldwide should be able to get an account.
Sounds good. That gives the government the data. We know what to do next.
Once we have "secured accounts" and linked data, everything is simple. Banking would be linked so that your address, employer, dependents, spouse, and related details are entered one time. Anytime anyone other than law enforcement accesses your data, it would be recorded on a confirmed public blockchain, letting you see exactly what they viewed. You would also be able to give or revoke temporary access at will to non-government entities, like you do with Google SSO.
Just look at this. All on one page, with one click access to third parties and others for your information.
From there, you can access any form in the entirety of government.
Click file federal taxes, and this is what comes up.
It is a 30-second process for most people because it is all pre-filled. You only have to verify its contents. And you can share it easily with others. Suffice it to say, if you prove to some official outside a Home Depot what your immigration status is, this will make it simple.
Forms would autofill with all data the government already has, with the source of each field shown. If you are elderly, you could grant access to interpreters or helpers. Payments would already be tied to your bank, timelines for processing would be clear, and all information would flow automatically into government databases—no typing needed. Simply logging in to your account would serve as the signature. Authorized third parties could use this single sign-on as “proof of personhood,” with the user knowing that only their name is passed along and nothing else. No more sharing Social Security numbers and other sensitive details, which would be far better for security. States and cities could integrate through API hooks.
Kevin did all of this in an hour. It ain’t rocket science. It is more the soft bigotry of low expectations.
And this isn’t just a message for the US. It is a message for every government, at all levels and any private organisation that doesn’t make things easy for their stakeholders — which they don’t.
You can play with the demo here. And forward this post to anyone who might listen.