Thank you.
Of course, it's a long story because Estonia celebrated 100 years, and we've now had our independence again for 27 years.
We had this opportunity to start anew, starting from a new constitution. Immediately we had this question in front of us of how we can meet all the requirements of democracy and pick up on what the state.... It was decided that we should use the power of technology.
This was an important decision. Also, we could see that policy matters. If you have a strategic vision of your country and your society, you can do a lot. Several of these kinds of strategic principles really have been new, but it was for the well-being of all members of society. Nobody was left behind when we developed e-government and an information society.
Also, our conviction was that the e-governance structure and model in Estonia should be a platform for all society, not only for the government itself. It's a benefit we receive from e-governance. The system should be for all citizens of Estonia. Based on these principles, we have this model, which is presented on a slide by Raul.
This Estonian model has three important components. First, a strong digital identity is given to us by our government. Our vision is that it is a role of government not only to deliver paper passports but also digital certificates and digital identification tools for citizens. This is one building block of Estonia's e-governance system.
The second component is digital data resources. We have hundreds of databases that will take digital data, but it is not enough to have good electronic services for citizens. It amounts to interoperability. It means that all these numerous datasets need to form one uniform system. This has been realized in Estonia through a system we call X-Road, which allows us to connect all datasets into one system. This is the basic architecture of Estonian e-government.
Third, e-government is not separate datasets; it's a system that needs to have well-established architecture. Many view these as basic components of the e-government model in Estonia. A citizen's digital data and interoperability are realized by the X-Road system.