Why visit Estonia when e-Estonia is already online?
Written by Annela Kiirats, Head of Digital Government Training
Almost everything about e-Estonia can be found online. You can read about digital identity, X-Road, interoperability and digital public services. You can join a webinar, take an e-course or ask AI to explain how Estonia built its digital society. So why do I still believe in study visits to Estonia?
Because knowing what Estonia has built is not the same as understanding why and how it works.
See the ecosystem and practitioners, not only the technology
Visitors sometimes come to Estonia expecting to discover impressive technology. What they find is something more valuable: a digital government ecosystem built over decades – something you can not see or touch, but feel.
Digital identity, secure data exchange with its registers, reliable, high-quality data, legislation, cybersecurity, and public services all need to work together. Behind them are institutions and people who have learned to cooperate, make difficult decisions, and adapt when things do not work, thereby enabling process agility and allowing them to learn from mistakes.
A study visit allows you to see these connections. More importantly, it gives you access to the people behind them – practitioners who have lived in the process.
When you sit across the table from someone who has spent years developing a national digital identity system, building interoperability or redesigning public services, the conversation goes beyond what is written in a strategy or shown on a slide.
You can ask practitioners, “Why did you choose this approach?” What was the hardest part? How did you get institutions to cooperate? What failed? What would you do differently today? Which decisions to take to ensure sustainability? Does innovation fade? For me, these are among the most valuable questions in government digital transformation.
Sometimes the most useful insight even comes during a coffee break, when one question leads to another, and someone suddenly sees their own challenge differently. It’s because the delegation member has taken time off from their everyday office tasks and focused on the lessons that led to a successful digital society.
Estonia is a case study, not a blueprint
For us Estonians, digital society is the norm. Some practice is more, some less, but it is provided to all of us equally – any time we feel like using its benefits. That said, I also think other countries should not simply copy it. Every country has its own institutions, legislation, resources, culture, and level of digital maturity. What works in Estonia cannot simply be exported and expected to work in exactly the same way elsewhere. However, the mindset should be the same: to understand what digitalisation entails, to understand the meaning of innovation, to understand the need to create a dialogue, and to collaborate.
That is precisely why study visits matter.
The goal is not to return home with a shopping list of Estonian solutions, since we can ask AI to generate one. It is to understand the principles, decisions, and lessons behind them, and to ask: What could work in our context? What makes us curious enough to start building something of our own, something that fits into our pattern?
Estonia’s successes can provide inspiration. Our mistakes and lessons learned can be valuable and help others avoid expensive detours. Digital transformation may be digital, but learning remains surprisingly human.
Learning remains human
Governments are making decisions about AI implementation, data governance, digital identity, cybersecurity, and public services that will shape their countries for years to come. Learning from those who have already faced similar choices can save time and money and help avoid mistakes.
As a participant in our training has put it: “Training is expensive, but not getting trained is more expensive,” or “I have heard about e-Estonia, but I always took the position that our realms are too far from one another, until I actually participated in the week-long course and had a chance to discuss possible scenarios for us. That totally changed my point of view.”
After many years of welcoming delegations to Estonia, I still see the same thing: the best study visits do not provide ready-made answers. They create better questions and support more informed decisions.
So if your organisation or government is planning its next step in digital transformation, come to Estonia with a challenge you want to solve. If you haven’t identified your challenge just yet, we will help you to identify one. Come with a plan to talk, so you will be ready to reflect on how lessons can be adopted into your local realities.
Meet the practitioners. Ask the difficult questions. Place yourself where you are today and create a vision for the future. I guarantee you will discover something you did not think about before. Someone´s normal can be another person´s innovation. And that´s the way the world circles!
Interested in a tailored e-Estonia study visit?
Get in touch with the eGA training team at .