Estonia’s Digital Affairs Minister: Switzerland never had a ‘burning need’ to go digital

Switzerland could easily become one of the most efficient digital states in the world, says Estonian Minister of Digital Affairs Liisa Pakosta. ETH Zurich / Andreas Eggenberger

Estonia has become a global model for digital government. Minister Liisa Pakosta says Switzerland already has everything it needs to follow a similar path – except the sense of urgency that drove Estonia’s transformation.

Estonia is widely regarded as one of the world’s most advanced digital societies, promoting itself with the slogan “0% bureaucracy and 100% digital services”. Citizens can vote, sign legal documents, access healthcare records and even divorce online using a national digital identity.

Switzerland, by contrast, is still grappling with fragmented digital public services. The rollout of the electronic patient record has been slow and uneven across the country. Swiss voters rejected the country’s first national electronic identity (e-ID) in a referendum in 2021, largely due to privacy concerns and the role of private companies, before narrowly approving a fully state-run eID in 2025.

How did the Baltic nation of just 1.3 million people become a global model for digital government? And what trade-offs come with building a state increasingly powered by artificial intelligence (AI)?

According to Estonia’s Minister of Justice and Digital Affairs Liisa Pakosta, the answer lies more in history than in technology.

“Switzerland is a very wealthy country,” she tells Swissinfo on the sidelines of the UN Global Dialogue on AI Governance in Geneva. “The only obstacle you have is that you haven’t had the burning need for change.”

After regaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Estonia faced a deep economic crisis. Inflation surged and public resources were scarce. “We started not even from zero, but from a deep minus,” Pakosta says.

“We had to find the cheapest, most effective and quickest way of governance,” she recalls. “When you are looking for the least expensive and most efficient way to govern, the digital way is the answer.”

Digitalisation was also a way to make government more transparent and less bureaucratic, Pakosta says.

A digital state inspired by banks

As early as 2002, Estonia introduced a nationwide digital identity, making it one of the first countries to link a digital identity to public services. Soon afterwards, the system became mandatory.

“It was a political decision, but also an economic one,” Pakosta says. “No political party wanted to promise citizens slower, more expensive public services financed through higher taxes.”

Winning citizens’ trust among the population, part of which was concerned about privacy and security, proved just as important as building the technology itself.

According to Pakosta, Estonia looked to online banking as a model. People were already familiar with authenticating themselves digitally and could see every transaction on their bank account. The government wanted citizens to feel the same level of trust and control when dealing with public services.

“We told citizens: if you trust digital systems with your money, you can also trust them with public services,” she says.

Today, Estonians can see whenever a public official accesses their personal data and challenge any access they consider unjustified.

>> How Switzerland’s slow digital transition may help protect democracy:

Public services come to citizens

The philosophy extends well beyond digital identity. “Our goal is that people barely notice the government at all,” Pakosta says. “Public services should simply come to them.”

When a child is born, parents automatically receive child benefits, a family doctor is assigned and other services are activated without having to submit multiple applications. “They can simply enjoy becoming parents.”

The same principle applies to other sectors. If one of Pakosta’s five children wants to apply to university, she explains, most information is already pre-filled. The applicant simply checks the data and submits the application.

Pakosta recalls asking Estonian doctoral students at the federal technology institute ETH Zurich what they found most difficult about studying in Switzerland. She expected them to mention advanced mathematics. Instead, they said it was: “filling out administrative forms”.

The reason is simple, she says: in Estonia they hardly ever needed to do that. Citizens provide their information to the government only once. Public authorities then exchange it securely among themselves, avoiding repeated paperwork.

Can everyone keep up?

A digital-first state inevitably raises another question: what happens to people who cannot – or simply do not want to – use digital services?

The issue is a familiar one in Switzerland, where concerns about digital exclusion contributed to voters rejecting the first e-ID proposal in 2021.

Pakosta explains that Estonia has tried to head off such fears. “The ID card is mandatory, but you do not have to use digital services by yourself,” she says.

The country does not maintain a parallel paper-based system for every service. Instead, people can receive assistance through local libraries, which also function as digital support centres. Citizens can get help accessing government services, online banking and, increasingly, AI tools. Those unable to leave home can receive assistance from local authorities.

“Nobody is left behind,” Pakosta says.

Not everyone agrees. Estonian mediaExternal link have reported cases of elderly citizens struggling with digital identity procedures, while criticsExternal link argue that digital government has also created new dependencies and costs instead of just reducing bureaucracy.

More digital, more vulnerable?

Another issue is that the more digital a country becomes, the greater its exposure to cyberattacks. And Estonia experienced this firsthand.

In 2007, the country suffered one of the world’s first large-scale cyberattacks against a state. Ten years later, researchers uncovered a vulnerabilityExternal link affecting Estonia’s digital ID cards.

Pakosta argues that both crises ultimately strengthened the country’s approach. “Cybersecurity and data protection are the starting point for everything we do,” she says.

Estonia has created a “data embassy” in Luxembourg, allowing essential government services to continue even if something happens on Estonian territory. “Just as banks duplicate their systems, governments must also ensure continuity,” Pakosta says.

After vulnerabilities were found in hundreds of thousands of digital ID cards in 2017, Estonia revoked and replaced the affected certificates before any known attacks occurred. “We have a policy of being completely open when something goes wrong because trust is essential,” she adds. “We do not hide problems.”

Some experts, however, arguedExternal link that authorities initially downplayed the seriousness of the vulnerability and waited too long before suspending affected certificates. Previously classified government documents published in 2021External link also suggested that earlier problems affecting the digital ID system had not always been disclosed promptly.

Drawing the line on AI 

Estonia now wants to become what Pakosta calls an AI-driven state. For her, this does not mean replacing people. “People remain responsible and final decisions will always be made by humans,” she says.

According to Pakosta, Estonia already uses around 200 AI applications across the public sector. In healthcare, for example, AI can help identify appointments with specialist doctors before a family physician makes the referral.

But Pakosta adds that Estonia has also deliberately limited how AI can be used. Its new AI development plan adopted this spring, she says, explicitly rejects using AI as a surveillance tool to reduce crime.

“Estonia has low levels of crime, but that is not thanks to surveillance,” she says. “It comes from trust and other factors.”

>> How Swiss smart cities are becoming more efficient – and what it means for your data:

The Baltic country has nevertheless experimentedExternal link with AI-assisted policing technologies, including facial recognition and automated analysis of social media. However, such deployments have remained limited and subject to data protection rules.

For Pakosta, those limits are part of a broader principle: citizens should remain in control of their personal data. Every public official who wants to access personal data needs a legal basis defined by parliament, she says.

“In Estonia, people control the government,” Pakosta says. “The government does not control the people.”

Could Switzerland catch up? 

As for Switzerland, Pakosta does not believe that the country’s federal structure is the main obstacle to the its digital transformation.

“You already have a postal network that works across cantonal borders,” she says. “Digital public services can work in exactly the same way.”

Switzerland, she says, already has the essential ingredients: innovation, highly skilled people and trusted institutions.

“If it embraced a digital approach similar to that of Estonia,” she says, “I think it could become one of the world’s most efficient digital countries.”

Edited by Virginie Mangin/dos