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0:54

Hi, I'm Lauren Good. Nope,

0:56

I hated that. Three, two, one.

1:01

Hi, I'm Lauren Good. And I'm Gideon Litchfield.

1:04

And this is Have a Nice Future, a podcast

1:06

about how terrifyingly fast everything

1:08

is changing. Each

1:11

week, we talk to someone with big, audacious,

1:15

and sometimes unnerving ideas about the future.

1:17

And we ask them how we can all prepare to live

1:19

in it. Our guest this week is Lucas Ilves. He

1:22

is the chief information officer

1:23

at Accenture's Global Business Center.

1:26

And in his office, he is the chief information officer of

1:29

the government of Estonia, which people often talk about as one

1:31

of the most digitally advanced governments in

1:34

the world. The fact that other countries in a couple

1:36

of years' time can look at what we've

1:38

done, learn these lessons, and then kind of catapult

1:40

themselves into being the

1:42

same league with us, that gives me ground for optimism that

1:44

actually governments can get better at this.

1:57

So Gideon, I've heard

1:59

passing references. to Estonia and that's

2:02

a magical futuristic place where

2:05

everything runs on the blockchain or something. But

2:08

I have to confess, I

2:10

know very little about Estonia.

2:13

I am going to be the proxy

2:15

today for audience members listening to this who

2:17

are like, I know nothing about Estonia,

2:19

tell me. That is your job. That's

2:22

my job. Okay,

2:24

well, so let me ask you something. In the last five

2:26

years or so, how many times do you think you have

2:29

filled in exactly the same information,

2:31

your name, address, phone, email, social

2:33

security number, health conditions, whatever, every

2:36

single time you've gone to see a new doctor

2:38

or applied for a driver's license or

2:41

done pretty much any other bit of bureaucracy?

2:44

A lot. A

2:45

hundred. You're saying within the past year, I can't

2:48

even begin to... However long, yes. I

2:50

can't begin to

2:52

remember. That's actually just

2:54

called adulting.

2:55

That's why

2:57

it's so hard. Yes. So what if you

2:59

never had to do that again? You show up at a new

3:01

doctor's office or at City Hall or at

3:03

the bank and you just prove to them that

3:05

you are you and they say, okay, thank you, Ms. Good.

3:08

Just tap here to accept our services and we'll

3:10

have all the data on you that we need.

3:12

So it's like Apple Pay for government.

3:15

Sure, if you want.

3:17

I think this

3:19

is good as long as the data

3:21

is secure.

3:22

Yeah. So what Estonia has is

3:25

this advanced system for permissioning data,

3:27

different bits of the government and also different

3:30

private companies all have data on you. But

3:32

you can decide who gets to see

3:34

which data from which place. This

3:36

system they call the X-road is basically a backbone

3:39

for transferring data between different entities.

3:42

And what's more, you not

3:44

only can give permission to individual

3:46

people or entities to see bits of your

3:48

data, you can also see who has looked

3:50

at it every single time. So you have total

3:53

transparency into how your data is being used, which

3:55

you certainly don't hear in the US. That

3:58

must be where the blockchain comes in.

4:00

somewhere in there the blockchain comes in yes possibly

4:03

the first use of a blockchain I've actually believed in okay

4:06

so let's go even further let's say you don't have

4:08

to file your taxes I'm listening

4:10

you just get a notification from the government that

4:12

your tax return is ready you take a look and

4:15

if it looks good to you you click accept and your

4:17

taxes are done what if they don't look

4:20

then you can change the quibble about something

4:23

okay I like the sound of this

4:28

too and now let's imagine you're eligible

4:30

for some kind of state benefit like disability

4:33

or an education grant or childcare

4:35

but you don't have to apply for

4:37

it you don't even have to know it exists you

4:39

just get a notification from the government saying you qualify

4:42

for this thing do you want it if yes

4:44

click here

4:45

how does the government know you're about to have a baby are they

4:48

spying no

4:50

but if it knows you've had a baby if you've been to the hospital

4:53

and registered a birth okay then they

4:55

kick in automatically

4:56

okay so there's one side of this that sounds a little bit big

4:58

brother and then there's another part of me that

5:00

thinks this is probably how a fully

5:03

digitized government

5:04

should work right it's kind of like

5:06

Steve Jobs used to say about Apple products it should just

5:08

work

5:09

and so Lucas's job is to

5:12

make this all work well not

5:14

his job alone but he is the guy

5:16

in charge of overseeing the digital transformation

5:19

that started about 30 years ago and

5:21

continuing to advance it across all the government

5:24

Estonia is

5:25

pretty small though right so

5:28

to ask a question that you know perhaps a Silicon

5:30

Valley VC would ask can

5:33

it scale this is something that

5:35

the United States could conceivably

5:36

do well that's what I wanted to talk to Lucas

5:38

about because Estonia is seen as

5:41

this poster child for digital government to

5:43

the point where it's kind of become a cliche people say

5:45

oh yeah Estonia but good luck

5:47

trying to replicate what Estonia does anywhere else I

5:50

basically wanted to ask Lucas how exportable

5:53

is the Estonian model and he seemed to

5:55

think it wasn't as unique to

5:57

Estonia as you might imagine well

5:59

I can't wait

5:59

to hear this.

6:00

And that conversation is coming

6:02

up right after the break.

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6:34

I'm Josh Klein. And

6:36

I'm Elise Hu. We host a podcast from Accenture

6:39

called Built for Change. Every part of every

6:41

business is being reinvented right

6:44

now. That means companies are facing brand new

6:46

pressures to use fast evolving technologies

6:48

and address shifting consumer expectations.

6:51

But with big changes come even bigger

6:53

opportunities. We've talked with leaders from

6:55

every corner of the business world to learn how they're

6:58

harnessing change to totally reinvent

7:00

their companies. And how you can do it too. Subscribe

7:02

to Built for Change now so you don't miss an episode.

7:05

Lukas

7:09

Ilves, welcome to Have a Nice Future. Thanks,

7:11

Gideon. It's a pleasure to be on. Are you having

7:13

a nice future? I am. Although

7:16

for me, it's my present. I

7:18

think most of our listeners probably have heard

7:21

that Estonia is a pioneer in digital government,

7:24

but they don't know much about what that means in

7:26

practice. So can you briefly talk about

7:28

the key things that make it a leader?

7:30

Sure. I mean, the headline point is really simple,

7:32

which is just that everything's digital. There isn't

7:35

a government service or an interaction

7:37

between citizen or business and government that

7:40

hasn't been digitized at this point. So everything

7:43

from the mundane that should be digital

7:45

at this point in pretty much every country in the world, like

7:48

filing your taxes, permitting of

7:50

any kind to some things

7:52

that are a bit less digitized in most parts of

7:55

the world, such as voting, where we've been able to vote online

7:57

since 2004 and in our most recent elections.

8:00

more than half of people did. And

8:02

of course beyond just digitizing things, we

8:05

have a very strong focus on taking advantage of

8:07

all the sort of the tools that

8:09

NewTek gives us to constantly make stuff

8:11

better. Whether that's better from the perspective

8:14

of transparency and accountability, convenience

8:17

or cost effectiveness. So in some

8:19

ways I'd say it's almost unremarkable. We do in

8:22

government what pretty much

8:24

everyone in the world everywhere does with

8:26

digital transformation which is to find ways to constantly

8:29

get better at what they're doing using the technologies

8:31

of the day. Atonia's been on this

8:33

journey of digitizing as government for

8:35

about 30 years. So how did it get started

8:38

and why do you think it got a head start on

8:40

so many other places? Well the

8:42

interesting thing is we didn't get a head start. We had a very

8:44

late start. So when did the U.S.

8:46

start digitizing government? In the late

8:49

40s or the early 50s with a bunch of mainframes.

8:52

And even countries that you don't think of as

8:54

being wealthy or super technologically

8:56

advanced have been doing digital government

9:00

at least in the sense of having government mainframes running back office processes

9:02

since the 1960s. Estonia

9:05

was forcibly occupied

9:07

by the Soviet Union until 1991 and

9:10

so in a sense a lot of our government processes

9:12

were much more backward technologically.

9:15

And when we regained our independence in 1991 we

9:17

effectively had a clean reboot of

9:19

a lot of how government functions. And so we

9:21

got lucky in timing. We started a time where

9:23

the thinking had just radically shifted in

9:26

terms of what providing a service means.

9:28

We were in the area of the internet. And the second

9:30

is that we didn't have a lot of in the way of resources. So

9:33

we couldn't just sort of take

9:35

1980s enterprise IT because

9:37

we didn't have the ability to afford IBM

9:39

and Accenture to come in and build that for us. And

9:42

so initially a lot of what we did was

9:44

sort of bootstrapped and sort

9:47

of at the time fairly young tech guys

9:49

figuring out very organically well what

9:51

makes sense, what kind of fits our functional

9:54

requirements. Let's talk about some of the

9:56

implications of what actually means for

9:59

users of government. government services. So, Estonia

10:02

has this principle that no piece

10:04

of data should have to be entered twice. How

10:07

does that change the experience for

10:09

people compared with a country like sitting

10:12

here in the U.S. every time you go to see a different doctor,

10:14

you have to fill in forms all over again? That's

10:16

right. So, that's what we call the once-only principle.

10:19

If the government has asked you for a piece of data, they don't

10:21

have a right to ask you for that same data again

10:23

in a different context. So, that means

10:26

pre-filled tax declarations where Estonians like

10:28

to compete on how long it takes them

10:30

to declare their taxes and what they're really competing on is who's

10:33

faster and logging on to the

10:35

tax service, pressing accept and being done. How

10:38

long does it take them to file once taxes? If you don't

10:40

actually look at the declaration, you can

10:42

do it in about 15 seconds. So, what's

10:45

happening in the background there is that

10:48

we have a pretty good taxonomy of the

10:50

data that government has and

10:53

when one public body has

10:55

a reason to use data, then they

10:57

go and query that from another public body based

11:00

on the legal authorization

11:03

they have to use that data. But the benefits

11:05

aren't just around convenience. It

11:07

makes your public services work more effectively.

11:10

It reduces a lot of error

11:13

and a lot of the sort of difficulties

11:15

in public service delivery where disadvantaged

11:17

populations might not get access to a service because

11:20

they don't know about some kind of an opportunity

11:22

or an entitlement that you can sort of do

11:24

away with. It reduces a lot of opportunities

11:27

for fraud on the one hand, but also corruption

11:29

on the part of officials. And it

11:31

also, we at least think, makes

11:34

us better at protecting our citizens' data because

11:36

instead of having massive

11:39

amounts of data over collected

11:41

everywhere and generally not necessarily stored

11:44

and safeguarded too well, if we've

11:46

got a piece of sensitive data, then we

11:48

focus on keeping that well protected

11:50

in one context, making sure the access

11:53

rules are strictly enforced

11:56

and making sure the right protections are in place and

11:58

then giving our citizens and transparency

12:00

on how that data is actually used. So my sense

12:03

from having visited Estonia a number of

12:05

times over the last couple of decades is it's a pretty technologically

12:07

literate country. But there will always be some

12:09

people, especially the elderly, who find

12:12

digital services a little harder to handle, or who

12:14

are especially vulnerable to hacking and having their data

12:16

compromised. How do you help

12:19

those people and how do you make sure nobody's getting left behind?

12:22

So there's a two-part answer. The first, of course, is how

12:24

you actually build your digital services to

12:26

address these problems, right? So it's

12:28

a basic, first of all, user design question. Where

12:31

you can have very complex services that

12:33

can still be easy to use or that can be a nightmare to use.

12:36

And the same thing's true, for instance, for questions around identity

12:38

theft or hacking. Part of having a security

12:41

ID is it puts additional barriers

12:44

in place to some of the usual ways

12:46

in which credentials would get stolen. So for part

12:48

of the elderly population, you're going to solve that

12:50

question by having easy to use convenient

12:53

services that don't create those problems.

12:55

And by the way, it's not just an elderly question.

12:57

If we look at the largest proportion of calls

12:59

to our help lines are actually

13:01

from people in the age bracket

13:04

of 18 to 25. Because a lot

13:06

of how government agencies design

13:08

services even in Estonia isn't really

13:10

built for how Gen

13:13

Z, you know, it's only uses mobile devices,

13:15

which has a kind of a different expectation of user

13:17

experience how they're using services. So

13:20

it's not always the case that younger means

13:22

that they have an easier time getting a service.

13:25

But for the elderly, you're never going to hit 100%.

13:28

You're always going to have people with

13:31

enough cognitive or

13:33

sensory impairment that they really can't use

13:36

a service. You're going to have people who

13:38

just refuse to use a service and we don't force

13:40

citizens to use digital services. There

13:43

is always an in person or paper alternative,

13:45

but it becomes a numbers game. The idea is not

13:48

that we move everyone into digitization, but that

13:50

if we can move 8020 or 9010,

13:53

the vast majority into digitized

13:55

automated panels, then we use

13:57

resources we have to then deal with

13:59

the other. five or the 10% in a way that actually pays

14:01

more attention to their needs and gives them

14:04

better outcomes. Right. So it

14:06

seems like one of the big shifts that's happening

14:08

at the moment in Estonia is

14:10

a move to proactive public services,

14:12

the idea that if you're entitled to some benefit,

14:15

you shouldn't have to apply for it. It should

14:17

just appear automatically. Where

14:19

do you expect that to end up? The idea is

14:21

really quite simple, right? Which is that the

14:23

triggering conditions for most public services

14:25

are written in the law somewhere. It

14:28

can be anything from as mundane as well. Your passport

14:30

needs to be renewed when your passport expires

14:32

to something a bit more sophisticated like

14:34

means testing for a public benefit. If

14:38

we know that we have the data that

14:40

determine whether

14:42

you are entitled to a benefit or should be

14:44

using some kind of a service, then

14:47

we're sitting on our hands

14:49

if we don't reach out to you when those data

14:51

or those events indicate something should be happening, right? The

14:54

basic idea is just that it's a convenience point. It's

14:56

as simple as me getting an SMS saying, hey,

14:59

your passport is going to expire in two months. Here's

15:02

the link to renew it. But as you then start going

15:04

through more complex events and services, you

15:07

get into situations where you're

15:09

notifying people of benefits that they weren't

15:12

aware that they're eligible for. You

15:15

might in particular be focusing on disadvantaged

15:17

populations where the information about the

15:19

availability of these benefits isn't really there. Or

15:22

you're pushing out things like,

15:24

for instance, in the case of COVID, right? Where we had

15:27

additional unemployment benefits and health

15:29

benefits and support also for enterprises,

15:32

you're going to the people that these benefits

15:34

are meant to target without waiting for

15:36

them to come to you, which should be contributing

15:39

to actually achieving the desired outcome,

15:42

the reason for which those benefits of those

15:44

targeted forms of support were created in the first place more effectively.

15:47

Right. I mean, it seems kind of obvious. And

15:50

yet, in most places

15:52

around the world, it's assumed that if you

15:54

want something from the government, you have to ask for

15:56

it. Yeah. And I mean, there

15:59

may still be asking for it. I have to ask to

16:01

have my passport renewed, but why shouldn't

16:03

the government tell you that, hey, you

16:06

can ask for it? Ask, wouldn't

16:08

you like to ask for it? Because again, all

16:11

of these various forms

16:13

of benefits and services, I mean, ostensibly they

16:15

exist because they're in the public

16:17

good and because the lawmaker wants

16:19

them to be used. So if

16:21

we're kind of funding something,

16:23

we're creating a legal framework and then we're just failing

16:26

to tell our users that it's out there. It's really

16:28

sort of doing 95% of

16:30

the work and then failing in the last 5%. Let's

16:33

talk about online voting. This year,

16:36

Estonians voted and for the first

16:38

time more than half the votes were cast online. Tell

16:41

us first of all, how that online voting system works.

16:43

What makes it secure? Yeah. So

16:46

the online voting we have in Estonia is actually quite similar

16:48

to a mail-in ballot. The ballot itself,

16:50

you have an anonymous ballot that

16:53

can only be read and decrypted by

16:55

the electoral commission after the voting's over.

16:58

And that in turn is digitally signed

17:00

using your electronic identity and your signature

17:03

that Estonians use every day for banking

17:06

and government services. And in practice, you've

17:08

got a piece of software which you download

17:10

to your desktop

17:12

or from next year onto your smartphone

17:15

and you cast that ballot. It

17:17

gets sent to the electoral

17:19

service and then once the voting period's over, it all

17:21

gets tabulated and counted. So it's a little

17:24

bit like the digital equivalent of

17:26

a paper ballot where you have a ballot

17:28

inside an envelope which is blank and then that

17:30

goes inside another envelope which has your voter information

17:33

on it. Basically, with a bunch of fancy

17:35

cryptography thrown in there, yeah. There

17:37

have been some claims over the years that the system

17:39

isn't entirely secure. Various researchers have suggested

17:41

that they found flaws and clearly it's taken

17:44

a while to build a public trust in the system

17:46

because it's only this year that more than half

17:48

the population voted online. Given

17:51

everything else that Estonia has been doing digitally,

17:53

does it feel like this one is harder to get right? About

17:57

now, almost a decade ago, we open

17:59

sourced the software. And of course, researchers from

18:01

across the world looked at that. And

18:03

they found some potential

18:06

theoretical concerns, and there

18:08

were a whole bunch of observations of

18:10

a process that were made, which we then took

18:12

on board. And we worked through

18:14

the software. We've made some updates. But

18:17

at the same time, there hasn't ever actually been

18:19

any form of compromise that's been discovered.

18:21

The flaws that have been talked about are all theoretical and

18:23

generally also have a whole bunch of technical

18:26

and organizational safeguards in place

18:28

so that even if any of these flaws

18:30

that, for instance, were discovered would have

18:32

been exploited, that wouldn't

18:35

have actually impact the integrity of the electoral process.

18:38

Making these elections secure, ensuring

18:40

the integrity of the process, ensuring

18:42

the secrecy of the ballot and so on has always been the

18:45

number one design consideration. And

18:48

the slow uptake, I'm not sure it's about trust. I

18:50

mean, initially, it was seen kind of

18:52

as a Yikish oddity.

18:55

And people don't vote very much. There's also,

18:57

for a large part of the population here as elsewhere,

19:00

there's

19:00

an element of ceremony to

19:02

going into your local polling booth. But

19:05

it's been one of those services where the uptake follows

19:07

an exponential growth curve, but it just takes time.

19:10

Obviously, the big matter question for

19:12

all of this conversation is how easy it is for other

19:14

places to do what Estonia is doing. And

19:16

particularly sitting here in the US, a lot of the stuff

19:18

that you're describing sounds science

19:21

fictional just because it's hard to imagine anybody

19:23

agreeing to a single centralized ID

19:26

that allows all your data to be shared across

19:29

different government agencies, for example. But

19:31

you lived in the US for a bunch of years. What

19:33

do you think it would take for some of the stuff that Estonia

19:36

is doing to be replicated here?

19:39

Yeah. So before I get to the US, let me say that a bunch

19:41

of countries have copied what we've done and they've taken

19:43

inspiration big and small. And

19:45

on the big side, India, and a lot

19:47

of how they thought about the India stack was really inspired

19:49

by what we did. Some countries have really copied

19:51

quite directly what we've done. So most recently,

19:54

most notably, Ukraine's digital transformation, I think,

19:56

was kickstarted by being inspired by us

19:58

and a lot of the ways in which they rebuilt individual

20:00

services based on what we've done, their

20:03

data exchange platforms, basically our X-Road,

20:05

and so on. And there's a long list of examples.

20:07

So this does transfer. And what's

20:10

been done in Estonia can be done, is

20:12

being done in every continent of the world. Now we

20:14

get to the US. I'd say that what I found

20:16

to be most detrimental to all those transformations,

20:19

and you see this in the US, you see this also in a couple

20:21

of other countries, I'd say Germany and Japan, is

20:24

a self-defeating attitude of, well,

20:26

we shouldn't even try because we probably can't pull it

20:28

off.

20:29

And in the US, that takes the form of deep

20:31

pessimism about the capability of the public sector to

20:33

do things differently. I would say the most important

20:35

thing is to actually not fall

20:37

into that sort of trap of

20:40

prejudging yourself to failure. English

20:44

speaking countries' perception that the government really shouldn't

20:46

be handing out identities, it's seen as a big brother

20:49

thing. But you see the results

20:51

of it, that politicians in these countries in the

20:53

US included, haven't really fought that fight. I

20:55

mean, I think the way that digital identity is probably

20:58

going to happen in the US is going to

21:00

be that the actual sort of technical layer is

21:02

probably going to be done by tech. And

21:04

then there's going to be interface probably with states

21:06

on how you actually take

21:09

the certificates and maybe even

21:11

the secure hardware in your iPhone or your

21:13

Android device and link that to identity

21:16

credentials. And I think basically

21:18

that's what Apple and Google are working on already. So I think

21:20

that probably EID in the US is

21:23

actually going to solve itself by the back door

21:25

without even realizing that it's been solved. What

21:27

that will require is enough people,

21:30

more I think it's state government, but with support from the federal

21:32

government having the courage to do that and sort of

21:34

get over the initial hump. And the best thing

21:36

to get over the hump is actually putting

21:38

services into users hands that they really

21:41

like. You put something that works, that's

21:43

fairly easy to use. And it also has

21:45

some transparency. Well, what

21:48

it's doing with the data into someone's hands. And I think that most

21:50

people say, Hey, this is great. I'm really happy.

21:52

It's made my life easier. And

21:53

if in the background

21:55

the work has been done to convince the privacy

21:58

advocates, et cetera, who would be

21:59

really concerned about it that actually this passes muster,

22:02

you would hope they'd sort of

22:04

listen to the signals. I realize that's

22:06

hopelessly naive given the political polarization

22:08

in the US, but that still sort of should be your

22:10

starting point. Do

22:13

you worry about Estonia starting to fall

22:15

behind having been the leader in building these

22:17

digital systems for so long as other

22:19

countries come in and innovate in their own way? So

22:22

don't worry about us falling behind, sadly in part

22:24

because this is tough to do across government

22:27

everywhere and so while we do have plenty of competition,

22:29

we don't have as much as I think we should. But

22:31

also because our main goal is to make

22:33

stuff better here. So stuff that keeps me up at night, it's

22:36

not will another country be better than

22:38

us, it's will

22:41

all the sort of normal bureaucracy of government

22:44

and all the sort of mundane challenges we have,

22:46

you know, funding cycles,

22:48

programming requirements, etc. get in the way of

22:51

doing the next cool interesting

22:53

thing. And you know,

22:55

not by thwarting it directly, but just death

22:57

by 1000 paper cuts. And

23:00

what makes you optimistic? Right

23:02

now, I'd say what makes me optimistic within government

23:05

Estonia is that we really got no point where

23:07

I think top management

23:10

and below them sort of the service

23:12

delivery teams really across government gets it. And

23:14

we put a lot of effort into executive

23:16

education, into training our civil

23:18

servants and not just the technology, but how

23:20

you do service design, how you think about data.

23:23

There's actually like a pretty across the board hunger

23:25

to

23:27

use the tools we now have to get

23:29

better business outcomes. So that's the first thing that

23:31

makes me optimistic. And the second thing that

23:33

actually makes me optimistic is precisely the fact

23:35

that we're not sort of the

23:37

only country in the world that's doing a good job at this. The fact

23:40

that other countries in a couple of years time

23:42

can look at what we've done, learn these lessons, and

23:44

then kind of how to pull themselves into being the

23:46

same week with us. That gives me ground for

23:49

optimism that actually governments can

23:51

get better at this. And that this, you

23:53

know, there isn't some kind of unique

23:55

special to Estonia, so set of circumstances

23:58

that doesn't scale because that would actually. should be a really depressing

24:01

conclusion. If the conclusion is actually anyone

24:03

can do this and it works for big countries and small countries,

24:05

I think it's a much more optimistic conclusion. Indeed.

24:08

Lucas Eilis, thank you very much for

24:10

joining me on Have a Nice Future. Thank you. Thank

24:13

you. Thank you.

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for everyone. So

25:24

my first question. Lucas

25:26

sounds like an American. I was expecting

25:28

an Estonian accent, so this surprised

25:30

me. Is he also an American?

25:32

Well, his father, who was the president of

25:34

Estonia, then taught at Stanford

25:36

for a while and Lucas studied in the US.

25:39

Okay, so more

25:40

seriously, I'm still not sure

25:42

I understand exactly how

25:45

their data system is so secure,

25:47

particularly when they do

25:50

still rely on third party vendors to

25:52

power some of these services. How do they make that work?

25:55

I mean, granted that I'm not a digital

25:57

security expert, but I'm a digital security expert.

26:00

It's a system that they've built over a

26:02

number of decades that is based on

26:04

this thing they call the X-road. And what that is

26:06

is simply an agreed platform

26:08

that no matter what data system you use

26:10

in whatever government ministry

26:12

or whatever private company, there

26:15

is a kind of pipeline that you interface

26:18

with by an agreed protocol that is secure.

26:20

And that pipeline is what carries data

26:22

from one entity's databases

26:25

to another and what controls who

26:27

accesses it and how permissions are granted.

26:30

And so they're using that single protocol

26:32

for everything, both in the public sector and

26:34

in the private sector. And they also use a blockchain

26:37

as a way of

26:39

making sure that things can't be changed without

26:41

leaving a trace. So somebody can

26:43

interfere with the data and then cover

26:45

up the interference that whatever change is made to

26:47

data is going to be recorded in the blockchain.

26:49

Got it. Okay. So

26:52

provided that works as promised, it seems like it'd

26:54

be pretty good for something like

26:55

voting. Do you think that online

26:58

voting is a

27:00

good thing generally? I mean, it has a bad

27:02

reputation here in the United States.

27:03

Cybersecurity experts have actively

27:06

opposed bills that would introduce

27:07

internet voting because of

27:09

how insecure they think it is. I

27:12

don't know if you recall, but we had a little

27:14

issue with our last presidential election.

27:16

There was something I heard, I think,

27:18

somewhere on the news. I

27:20

think it seems as if Estonia has done

27:22

quite a bit of work and has taken some time both to build

27:24

up the trust and to build up the security of its online

27:27

voting system. But as Lucas said, they now have more

27:29

than half of the voters voted online

27:31

in the last election. I think there is

27:33

another argument that one might make against online

27:36

voting, which is that voting is seen as a civic

27:38

duty and is a kind of – it's an

27:40

opportunity for people to come together. You all show up at

27:42

the voting booth. You're standing in line with other

27:44

citizens. You get to feel

27:46

like you're participating in this important democratic

27:49

process and that if you just click

27:51

a button online, maybe it won't have that

27:54

effect. But I don't know if there's evidence

27:56

either way that shows that that's true. We've

27:59

seen voting rates differ. line in many, many countries

28:01

where they have voting in person. So

28:04

I don't think we can say

28:06

definitively that online voting makes it worse.

28:09

Right. And then voting in person also creates opportunities

28:11

for voter intimidation. Yeah. One

28:14

of the things Lucas talked about was how their online voting system

28:16

allows you to vote as many times as you want, which

28:18

seems weird and counterintuitive. But

28:21

what he was saying was if someone tries to pressure

28:23

you to vote a certain way or even to bribe

28:25

you, you could vote the way they want.

28:27

And then five minutes later, you could vote again. And

28:29

only your last vote counts in the system. Oh,

28:31

that's interesting. So that takes away the incentive to

28:34

bribe people or to put pressure on them. Wow.

28:36

You could change your votes as often as you change your outfits.

28:39

Right. You wake up one day and have a

28:41

totally different vibe. Right. But only the

28:43

last one counts.

28:44

I'm intrigued by Lucas' claim that we

28:46

will get a single electronic identity

28:48

here in the United States via some

28:50

sort of backdoor, implemented

28:53

by tech firms like Apple and Google. People

28:56

in tech have talked about this idea of federated

28:58

identity for a long time. But also, I'm not

29:00

sure this should be powered by the private

29:02

sector. How do you think this would actually work?

29:05

It seemed to me that what Lucas was saying was

29:08

if you see what Google and Apple,

29:10

and I think even Microsoft are already

29:12

doing, they've rolled out these things called pass

29:14

keys. And the idea of a pass key is instead

29:17

of having a password for

29:19

each site that you log into, your

29:21

phone or your computer basically

29:23

authenticates with that site and says based on

29:26

this person's fingerprint or their face ID,

29:29

I can confirm that this is the person who

29:31

has this identity. And that

29:33

eliminates the possibility that you might have multiple logins

29:35

with different emails, some passwords that

29:37

are compromised, all of that kind of uncertainty.

29:41

So your phone or your device becomes

29:44

the identity standard for you. Once

29:47

that becomes more accepted, it's logical

29:49

then that government services, banks,

29:51

everybody else will all start adopting

29:53

pass keys. And then what

29:56

happens de facto is that you have

29:58

a single identity across these different services.

30:01

And that's what I think he meant by this coming in via

30:03

the back door that because the tech firms

30:05

have built these identity systems for us, we

30:08

now start to have the possibility to swap

30:10

information in theory between those services

30:12

if we choose to allow it. And maybe he's suggesting

30:15

that that's what's eventually going to happen.

30:17

Okay, so the one thing that I can

30:19

get behind that Lucas talked about automated

30:21

taxes. I mean, the US

30:24

government services are pretty

30:26

digitized at this point, you can buy

30:28

your marketplace health insurance, file

30:30

for unemployment, register your car,

30:33

all this stuff entirely online. But

30:35

when it comes to tax season, we still have to go looking for

30:37

our W twos, our 1099s, we

30:39

either then file our own taxes

30:42

using onerous services like TurboTax,

30:44

or maybe

30:45

you package all those files neatly and send them

30:47

off to an accountant who ultimately comes back to you and

30:49

says, Guess what? I need more forms.

30:52

I kind of want to Sonya's version.

30:54

Right. So when you said that US government

30:56

services are already pretty digitized, I

30:58

think the key difference here between the US and Estonia

31:01

is here, they're digitized, but still siloed.

31:03

So you still have to have separate data for

31:05

each of those things that you do online. And

31:08

but those services don't exchange data with each other,

31:10

whereas in Estonia, they do. But then as

31:12

for filing taxes, essentially, what

31:14

Estonia does is

31:16

give us access to your bank

31:18

records, and your salary records and

31:20

everything else. And then we the government

31:23

from that data for create your tax

31:25

return.

31:25

So you have to be comfortable with

31:28

that. Now, I don't see why you wouldn't

31:30

be because ultimately, you're giving them all of that information

31:32

anyway. Donald Trump, but please.

31:36

But yes, you have to now manually go

31:38

through the process of compiling all of that information

31:41

and giving it to the government so it can

31:43

calculate your taxes. So why

31:45

not just give it to them preemptively and let them

31:47

do the work? That's what that seems like a great

31:49

idea to me.

31:50

So why don't we have this yet? Why has there

31:53

not been a candidate for president who has said, I'm going

31:55

to run on the e government platform, I'm going

31:57

to digitize all of this and make your life easier?

31:59

Can you imagine what an exciting governing platform

32:02

that would be in the US? Wouldn't that just

32:04

bring people out in droves? I can't recall in recent

32:06

history any president saying, one

32:09

of my top priorities is going to be digitizing

32:10

the government. And I suppose

32:13

Barack Obama did this too with

32:14

healthcare.gov. Which was a

32:16

resounding success. Ooh, the initial rollout

32:19

was rough. Yeah, it was a real mess.

32:20

Yeah, so why hasn't a candidate done this?

32:23

I think part of it is that it's kind of boring as

32:25

a campaign platform in the US. I mean, the

32:28

things that get people riled up are

32:30

polarizing issues like abortion and taxes

32:32

and gun control and so on. Actually,

32:35

you just made me wonder what the Estonia's policy

32:37

on abortion.

32:38

I mean, abortion is legal in Estonia. I think the

32:40

reason this is a worry in the US is that state

32:43

laws vary. So where an abortion

32:46

or gun ownership are legal under certain

32:48

conditions in one state, they might not be in another

32:50

state. And people who are traveling out of

32:52

state for an abortion might not want the state

32:54

they came from to know that they went and

32:56

got it somewhere else.

32:57

Right. So in a totally polarized America,

32:59

you might have one group of people, let's

33:02

say gun control activists,

33:04

who really think it would

33:06

be beneficial to have a centralized database

33:08

of every assault weapon in the

33:11

United States and

33:12

who owns that weapon or who's in possession

33:14

of it. At the same time, there might be

33:16

people who don't believe in abortion and

33:19

feel strongly it should be illegal. Who

33:20

also think that there should be a database of people who get an

33:23

abortion?

33:23

And that's a scary future.

33:26

But I think the thing that is often really misunderstood

33:28

about Estonia's data system, which

33:31

is why it might also in fact work in the US,

33:34

is that it is not about necessarily

33:36

centralizing a database. You could

33:38

have state level databases

33:40

of who's had an abortion or who owns guns, you could

33:42

even have city level. And

33:45

you as the citizen

33:47

would have control over who gets

33:49

to see the data in your state database. So you

33:51

could say, I'm from Texas, doesn't

33:54

have the right to see any abortion data or

33:56

any health data that I have from another state, for

33:59

example.

34:00

That's the way that data is exchanged in the Estonian

34:03

system and so that does actually allow for a

34:05

lot of security. I think the

34:07

problem with this discussion in the US is

34:09

it would be very hard to make that clear to people and

34:11

I think people would assume that everything is

34:13

being centralized and everything is being

34:15

big-brothered. You know I think

34:18

it's a shame that this conversation

34:20

is so hard to have in the US because I

34:22

actually think a lot of the distrust in government

34:25

in this country especially is because

34:27

government services are often so lousy and

34:31

making them more digital and making them better

34:33

connected so you didn't have to spend all your time re-entering

34:35

data or you didn't have

34:37

conflicting versions of your data sitting on different

34:40

servers, that would actually make

34:42

it a lot more efficient, a lot more reliable, a lot more easy

34:44

to use and it might increase

34:47

trust in government but

34:49

it's very hard to see how you get there politically.

34:53

That's our show for today. Thanks for listening.

34:55

Have a Nice Future is hosted by me, Gideon

34:57

Litchfield.

34:58

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35:20

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