Digitizing the State: Lessons from Estonia w/Joel Burke and Keegan McBride
Joel Burke and Dr. Keegan McBride join the Dynamist to discuss the digitization of Estonia and potential policy relevance for American digital infrastructure and governance.
The Dynamist · Keegan Mcbride, Joel Burke, Evan Swarztrauber
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Show Notes
In an era where government tech projects often end in billion-dollar failures and privacy nightmares, there's a tiny Baltic nation that's quietly revolutionized what's possible. Estonia—a country of just 1.3 million people—has built what might be the world's most efficient digital government. Every public service is online. Digital signatures save 2% of GDP annually. And in a twist that should intrigue American conservatives, they've done it with smaller government, not bigger.
How did a former Soviet republic become a model of lean digital governance? What's their secret for avoiding the "big-bang IT project" disasters that plague Washington? And most importantly—can America's divided political system learn anything from Estonia's success?
Joining for this episode are two experts who've studied Estonia's digital miracle up close. Dr. Keegan McBride is senior policy advisor in emerging technology and geopolitics at the Tony Blair Institute. He's also a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation. Joel Burke is the author of Rebooting a Nation: the Incredible Rise of Estonia, E-Government, and the Startup Revolution, and Senior Public Policy Analyst at Mozilla.