Development Program of Estonian Information Society 2020: Goal and Foul
There is a very interesting document called "Development Program of Estonian Information Society 2020" in front of me. The document gives us vision for planning the development of IT in Estonia since year 2012 till year 2020, and today I'll give my opinion on Goal and one Foul achieved since the year of the creation of this document.
The Program divides IT Development into 4 sections:
1. Better life for people. Improvement of life and integration of IT in it.
2. Viability of Estonian cultural legacy. Improvement of availability of Estonian culture, cultural data and legacy for everyone by means of IT, spreading of Estonian language in IT.
3. Bigger job market. Additional job places in IT sector.
4. Higher economical efficiency/productivity.
I think, that every resident in Estonia will agree with me that the biggest step since year 2012 was done
in the first section. The improvement of life for people by means of IT. Then we call Estonia "Electronic State", we mean that everything here can be done via internet. Basically we can live in bunker ,if there is the WiFi or LTE or Cable or... anything, which connects us with the Net.
What we got:
1) Basically we have an open, free, full of possibilities information area, where we can feel ourselves and our private data more or less protected.
2) We have limitless possibilities as consumers, we are not constrained in shopping by internal market, and even internal market can be reached via internet. The smart houses are still in development, I don't see many of them, but I think that this is the problem of our building market, where is possible to sell usual houses for big money and no need to develop or improve technologies, also the usual new houses are merely available for people, and this constrains the market development.
3) All most used services can be reached from home by your favourite browser. We have X-road, e-riik and etc. Same thing in health services, we can book a visit to doctor by some clicks or find data about our last illness on the web.
4) The web also gives us possibilities to develop and improve services and business.
5) The Estonia ICT index increased from 7,28 points (2012)(1) to 8,14 points in year 2017(2).
6) The title "Electronic State" is known as brand around the world.
Writing this, I started to believe that, there is nothing to tell about fouls, the success in development of IT for people can't be merged with any foul. However, the success in economical efficiency of ICT is not so bright. Indeed, we fall back since year 2014 in export of our ICT products and development of smart buildings and transport.
So the Foul is in acchievment of higher economical efficiency/productivity.
Only 1% of all cars in Estonia are "eco-friendly" hybrid/electric cars.(3) Abandoned by goverment supporting program for buing of electric cars made the cars expensive and disadvantageous. The efiicient (smart) buildings. The A class is compulsory for dwellings since this year only, and not every region is suitable for building of A class. So I suppose, that the growth of A class buildings will decrease the cost of such dwelling, but still the economy of resources can't be improved dramatically this year.(4)
The export...
Despite of the imporvements in ICT, we still can't sell it abroad. I tried to find statistics by myself and found that the profitability of ICT export is basically the same as in year 2011, so no any growth from that moment till 2017. Indeed it was till year 2014, but then the export falls each year. I
can't trace more fresh data by year, but the tendency is not good. The document gives us starting point - 14,2% in year 2011 (I got 17,25%). According to my data, we even acchieved the target in yerar 2014 (20,15%), but then lost it and in 2017 the ICT already had the 16,41% share of export. If we'll take the descrepancy between data, the share in accordance with calculations in document should be below 14%.
Overall, as every other sector of economy, the ICT needs constant improvement, but we can be proud of steps taken by the country, goverment and us in integration of IT in our everyday lives.
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