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.
What was right, what parliament did, was put some basic legislation in place, such as the digital identity we introduced in 2001. The digital signature is the most-used electronic service in Estonia. We don't need to sign documents on paper anymore. We use digital signatures, and there's a huge economy of resources, time, and money in having this opportunity at hand now.
The Estonian e-government development was not one project. It was step by step, but we made the right decisions at the right times. Digital identity use, legislation, and technology for that X-Road, and this interoperability layer we have were all necessities, because we had in Estonia a similar situation to what you have in Canada. There were different datasets not working together, and the X-Road exchange layer was a necessity to overcome this situation. Because of that, now we don't need to count how many electronic services we have, and it's very easy to have new electronic services, to put together information and data we have in our systems.
In Estonia, government can only use my data based on law. Data cannot be used by the government unless the law gives the authority to government institutions to ask for and use my data, and this is very important and different from private businesses, where gaining my consent may be the driving force to use my data.