This deck presents a range of models for thinking about digital government and its structure. The models stem from the fields of management, system dynamics and enterprise architecture and are applied in a governmental context

1. foundations of estonian digital government
Andres Kütt
May 28, 2015
Chief Architect, Information System Authority

2. introduction

3. today
∙ Introduction
∙ Mental models for thinking about the government
∙ Five separate models for approaching the subject
∙ Not comprehensive, not validated but possibly useful
∙ The models are provided in Estonian context
∙ Gaps in knowledge will be revealed
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4. introduction
∙ Today is not about telling you about how things are, it is about
encouraging thinking
∙ The term “Digital government“ is used instead of “e-government“
∙ Often, the first word is omitted
∙ This is important: in Estonia, e-government is not something distinct
from the overall government
∙ “e-“ is slightly overused, “Digital“ is more precise
We are discussing a very abstract and fragile topic, semantics are
very important!
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5. foundations of digital government
E-government is a complex matter requiring multiple viewpoints
∙ The enablers model
∙ The feedback model
∙ The historic model
∙ The organisational model
∙ The mechanical model
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6. the enablers model

7. the enablers model
e-governance
Trustandcollaboration
betweenstakeholders
Ubiquitouselectronic
identification
“Breathingroom”
CriticalcompetencesE-government as emerging from a set of enabling factors
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8. trust and collaboration between stakeholders
An externally guaranteed trust framework between citizens,
businesses and the government as well as cooperation
∙ Information systems involved are too complex to comprehend,
thus the need for explicit trust
∙ There has to be an external (e.g. cryptographic) guarantee to the
trust keeping it from gradual deterioration
∙ Only wealthy countries can afford not to have that trust: IRS lost
$5.2 billion to identity theft in 2013. Translated via GDP this would
mean e6 million annual loss in Estonia.
∙ Ability to find common ground between engineers, politicians and
administrators but also, say, banks and the government
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9. ubiquitous electronic identification
On the internet, nobody knows you are a dog
∙ The assurance level of services provided is dependent on the
assurance level of the electronic ID
∙ The British way can only go so far
∙ For simple cases e-mail is sufficient
∙ Digital signature requires a PKI-based solution
∙ Ubiquity stems from people using various e-services on a daily
basis and realising their benefit. It is needed so that
∙ electronic service can become dominant
∙ the users are acquainted with the risks involved
∙ the users actually find it convenient to use it
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10. ”breathing room”
The players must have the ability and capability to change their
operating model with reasonable effort
∙ By definition: if everything is in place, any change would go
against the well-established rules
∙ Stability means things happening tomorrow the way they happen today
∙ Innovation means the exact opposite
∙ Many of the decisions underpinning our e-government would be
impossible to execute in a well-controlled environment
∙ Risk management processes alone would be a sufficient deterrent
∙ This is mental to a large extent: what do people have to loose?
∙ A certain level of chaos is needed for progress
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11. critical levels of critical competences
Without the following competences, it is not feasible to build an
e-government as they are neigh to impossible to outsource
∙ Ability to procure development
∙ Basically, one must be able to act as a responsible customer
∙ Vendor management is big part of it
∙ Ability to provide input and validate the output
∙ Ability to procure operations
∙ Operating the service means controlling the data, this is important!
∙ Weak operations lead to low service levels and loss of trust
∙ Information/cyber security
∙ Who will work out your electronic identity scheme?
∙ Whose cryptography do you trust (and can you make your own)?
∙ How do you protect your service?
To sustain the e-government, the ability to absorb IP is needed
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12. the feedback model

13. the feedback model
People Behaviour
Society
(e-)governance
Government as a dynamic non-linear behaviour of society
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14. about the model
All organisations are shaped by the systems they build and the
systems they build are shaped by the organisations
∙ Skype the organisation was shaped by Skype the software
∙ Organisations produce software that mimics their internal
∙ communications structure
∙ organisational culture
∙ organisational structure
∙ How the model works
∙ People behaving in certain ways form a society
∙ The society yields certain means of governance
∙ The governance changes behaviour subduing undesirable and
rewarding desirable traits
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15. feedback in estonia
∙ Estonian people are slightly strange
∙ Many of us are of distinct Soviet up-bringing: mend and make do while
minimizing contact with the government
∙ Our behaviours are shaped by the initial steep reforms undertaken, we
are used to change
∙ There is a high level of trust towards the state
∙ Presumably because of the way we re-gained independence
∙ We do not know!
∙ The feedback is very likely there
∙ Increasing popularity of electronic voting will force us to change it
∙ But we don’t know much about if and how the feedback works
elsewhere
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16. the historic model

17. the historic model
Foundations
Technical Legal Social
Public service
Technology Regulations Organisations
Customer value
E-government as being built on top of foundations rooted in the past
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18. about the model
All countries come from their past and must build on foundations
they have
∙ Replacing foundations gets harder as the building gets larger
∙ Three kinds of foundations
∙ Technical: the technical infrastructure and capabilities of the society
∙ Legal: the legal framework of the society
∙ Social: social structure, behaviours and culture
∙ Public service
∙ Democracy seeks to distribute power and can thus lead to
fragmentation of services
∙ Services contain technical, regulatory and organisational components
∙ From the services, inexorably, customer value emerges
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19. foundations of estonia
∙ The technical foundations are well-understood
∙ X-road
∙ Electronic identity
∙ Legal foundations not so much
∙ “X-road directive“
∙ Data set law
∙ Where do the personal identification code, Once Only, authorisation
provisions etc. come from?
∙ Social foundations even less
∙ There is no coherent research on the history of Estonian cyber culture
∙ We obviously rely on Soviet education but how and to what extent?
∙ Why do Estonians trust their country so much?
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20. services and value in estonia
∙ There is an effort by MKM1
to increase service-orientation
∙ Some administrative research is there
∙ Not much robust academic knowledge
∙ Not clear, what constitutes a public service
∙ Theoretical model exist within EC, their applicability is unclear
∙ The value part is not clear at all
∙ The numbers quoted are pretty much made up
∙ There is anecdotal evidence of massive ROI but very little conclusive
∙ EMTA decreasing their workforce, prevention of identity theft, the case
for photo booths at Road Authority
∙ Difficult to scale up but possibly comparable to other countries
1Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communication
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21. the organisational model

22. the organisational model
Business architecture
Organisational architecture
Functional architecture
Technical architecture
Physical architecture
Government as an organisation
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23. architecture layers of organisations
Organisations can be seen as layers of different but interdependent
architectures
∙ Business architecture defines the strategy, business model and
partnership structure
∙ Organisational architecture is the organisational structure and
processes executing on the strategy
∙ Functional architecture consists of interrelated functional
“chunks“ supporting the organisation
∙ Technical architecture is what implements the functional pieces as
software components
∙ Physical architecture is the hardware running the software
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24. layers of estonia
This is an approximation, of course.
∙ Constitution describes business architecture
∙ The setup of ministries, agencies and governing bodies is the
organisational architecture
∙ Functional architecture contains the arrangement of registries
∙ Technical architecture is the implementation of these registries as
databases and systems
∙ These systems are deployed on a physical infrastructure
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25. the mechanical model

26. the mechanical model
Agency Agency AgencyAgency
Financeandportfoliomanagement
Cybersecurity
Information System Registry
Electronic identity
Citizens/Officials/Enterprises
Delivery channels
Integration
Infrastructure
Government as a (static) combination of technical and process
components
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27. electronic identity
∙ Implemented using PKI, CA service provided externally
∙ The certificates live on a chip (smart card or SIM)
∙ Digital signature legally equivalent to the physical one
∙ Depends on the personal id-code of the citizen
∙ Bank-driven federated identification scheme widely adopted by
stakeholders
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28. channels
∙ Central service portal eesti.ee with 800+ services accessible
∙ Main challenge: maintaining service ownership
∙ No central UI/UX guidelines although a recommended web site
template exists
∙ Hundreds of individual contact points
∙ Mobile is very small
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29. integration
∙ Distributed service bus called x-road
∙ All communication happens peer to peer
∙ x-road provides standardised
∙ channel crypto
∙ access control
∙ service discovery
∙ audit logging
∙ identity management
∙ protocol support
∙ Massive deployment, 1000+ usable services
∙ Constantly developed, version 6 getting ready to roll
∙ De facto enables once-only and privacy
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30. infrastructure
∙ Being expanded rapidly, currently only network
∙ Government cloud is a combination of
∙ private cloud
∙ public cloud
∙ data embassies
∙ Security and service availability major drivers: we no longer can
run this country without e-services
∙ Scalability and cost are also becoming an issue
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31. main open questions
∙ Does this model apply to other countries?
∙ Is it possible to quantify e-government architectures using this
model?
∙ What is the relationship between this model and the feedback
model?
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32. license

33. theme
Get the source of this theme and the demo presentation from
http://github.com/matze/mtheme
The theme itself is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
cba
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34. contents
The contents of the slides is lidecensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International
cbna
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35. Questions?
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