Editorial: the e-state way of thinking

Photo: AP / Scanpix

It’s a long time since the man in the street thought e-state was ministers sitting at desks dong digital document exchange. In information and communication technology, every month, day and often a minute counts.

And here we find ourselves in a situation where the public acquires increasing ability to weigh in and have a say about developing the e-state. This is important as e-state also is an agreement of agreements by people, just in a form more modern.

Open data, a topic covered broadly in Postimees today, is a direction taken by many a nation – and a worthy idea for Estonia to tackle. Open data means that agencies create data, machine-readable and for free and public use by all – with no limits on application and distribution. By Public Information Act, open data environment was supposed to function starting this January. The portal has indeed been created, but so far it is pretty chaotic the way agencies enter data therein.

Of course, agencies can be punished; even so, the endeavour would perhaps be a bigger success if we managed to show the potential profits. The data held and produced by the thousands of agencies is an ocean, but what do we actually do with it? Meanwhile, the Estonian (language!) market is inevitably small so private firms potentially producing applications have not been greatly motivated to urge on the process. Surely, some fears are justified: two agencies may possess open data which, put together, may not be allowed for public use various reasons. The aspect requires analysis more thorough than has been.

In such cases, they often ask: is he glass half full of half empty? Let’s say it’s half full, rather. Whoever has asked for data has, as a rule, received them. For instance, many Tallinners use a mobile app to plan use of public transport – when the bus comes, when to connect etc. Other examples are meieraha.eu by the think-tank Praxis – an attempt to visualise the state budget via web applications. 

The open data portal is nice; hopefully the emptiness will not persist. It ought to be filled automatically. That would ensure freshness. But these are technicalities. Very importantly for E-Estonia, public servants and private businessmen must increasingly discover ways of making good use of these data. The data is only of use when used.

At times, things don’t happen as fast as fans would like to, or as the law prescribes. That’s only natural. Important for us to come quickly around to the e-state way of thinking.