Thank you very much.
Thank you both for attending.
To begin I want to clarify a bit of a misconception in some of the questions from Mr. Kent with respect to the e-ID in Estonia. It is not a mini computer that centralizes all personal information. In fact, the very foundation of the Estonian digital government is decentralization. The digital ID is an identity card that allows them to access the system, but it's not storing mountains of personal information.
What I really want to get at, and I think the usefulness of this study, is to ask how we can apply the idea of privacy by design to digital government so that we can actually improve services for Canadians.
At the outset I would note that according to Estonia's public information, nearly 5,000 separate e-services enable people to run their daily errands without having to get off their computer at home. As a Canadian who wants better service out of his government, I want that. How do we alleviate privacy concerns from the get-go so we get better service?
If we look at the Estonian model, we have a digital ID. We have a separation of information between departments using X-Road and blockchain technology. Then we have transparency in the sense that when a government employee accesses my information, I can see who did it and it's time-stamped as to when they did it. If you add those layers of detail into a digital government system, is that sufficient to address privacy concerns? Are there other things we should be doing if we're looking to digital government?
I'll start with Dr. Cavoukian and then Dr. Geist.