e-Talks: Citizen OS e-democracy platform for the citizens of the world

The rise of 24/7 technology and immediacy of information have given the public the power to get involved in issues they care about the most. Now people can easily start a discussion on social media, they can write a blog or produce a vlog on various publishing platforms. They can also demand action by bringing digital connections over into the “real world”.

Last year’s World Clean Up Day by Let’s Do It Network gathered around 17 million people in over 158 countries to take part in the largest social movement against waste and pollution. Organizing a global event would not be possible without a channel that allows working together for a common goal.

The Citizen OS headquarters – the platform that made such worldwide collaboration possible – is located in the trendy district of Telliskivi in Tallinn. CEO Margo Loor is proud of what their digital solution has contributed to the success of the annual World Clean Up Day, but is also quick to say that Citizen OS is more than just a channel for interaction. He emphasizes in our interview that Citizen OS is a tool to empower individuals to take an active role in shaping policies to address social issues, may it be local or global.

What is Citizen OS?

Citizen OS is a civic technology organization who developed the software and online platform of the same name. The e-democracy platform enables individuals to participate in collaborative decision-making or initiate a petition to tackle issues in society.

Users can start a discussion that can be targetted to a certain organization or group of people, citizens of a village or a state, or open to everyone in the world. Under this thread, participants of the discussion can post their arguments, upload supporting documents, and eventually bring the discussion to a vote.

How to use the Citizen OS platform can be found here:

Global citizen-driven change

The global fight against waste and protection of our environment are complicated issues to solve. A piece of plastic bag thrown in the beach may end up to a shore halfway across the planet. However, an equally significant problem is that no one owns up the responsibility.

People have been cleaning illegally dumped garbage and the question was how do we keep the country clean? How do we make it so that it does not reappear? These questions inspired Loor and his team to develop the Citizen OS platform to involve citizens in crafting solutions to this global problem.

“One way to impact environmental policies is to involve multiple actors and not just a few officials.”

Citizen OS facilitates this radical shift in consciousness that it is everyone’s responsibility. The World Clean Up Day, also based in Tallinn, is one success story that demonstrates the possibility to push for change beyond national and continental boundaries.

Under World Clean Up Day thread, various discussions that require a collaborative decision from stakeholders all over the world float around Citizen OS. This includes volunteer management, event organizing, and policy proposals calling for support.

Local initiatives

On the local level, Estonians proposed a number of legislations through the Citizen OS software embedded in their partner organizations’ website. The non-profit organization Rahvaalgatus, for example, have submitted citizen-initiated proposals to the Parliament of Estonia. The first of which is to protect the habitat of a species of flying squirrel, an endangered animal.

There other topics going on right now in Rahvaalgatus website in various stages of the citizen-initiative process. There are topics that want to talk about tax, to review provisions of the law, and to crowdsource ideas for better policies among others, all done through the back-end support of Citizen OS.

Other countries are also using Citizen OS for citizen-engagement and inclusive policy-making. The platform has a localization package that can be downloaded from GitHub to fit the needs of organizations.

As is the case of Macedonia where Loor surprisingly discovered the use of their platform in youth empowerment and civic education. The extensive use in that country prompted the development team to add Macedonian translation package in their list of languages, one of many ways that Citizen OS supports local movements.

“There has been a lot of carry-on interest from Let’s Dot It projects that many organizations from Indonesia expressed interest in using Citizen OS for involving communities in collaborative decision-making”

In Indonesia, Let’s Do It Network is piloting a project on best practices on responsible waste disposal. This use-case attracted interest from other organizations in the Southeast Asian country to use the e-democracy platform to involve their userbases and members in drawing up solutions in their respective fields.

Trust issue in digital space

As with many e-democracy platforms, online verifiability could pose a big challenge in maintaining the integrity of the discussions. Concerns over undesirable accounts like bots, trolls, and spammers may contaminate valid arguments.

On the other hand, in situations where verifiability may be available, encouraging people to trust and use an online platform could be a challenge as well with the common theme around privacy concern and data breach being the reasons.

“Identification needs to be solved otherwise democratic decision making for countries online is not going to work or proceed to a higher level of impact.”

Building trust and creating meaningful experience is one of the things that Citizen OS is trying to address. In Estonia, the availability of eID minimizes this challenge but in other countries when there is no established way to authenticate yourself online can be fairly difficult.

The way forward said Loor is to work with partner organizations and startups who innovate in online identification field to understand what methods are in place and how to support them.

Future of e-democracy

“The ways our countries are run, that is still very much 16th-17th century models.”

Loor envisions a break to old age system of representative decision-making wherein only a small circle of people have the rights to make or change policies and laws.

He believes that more people will participate in legislative processes if they have access to tools that allow their voices to be heard.

The advent of technologies like smartphones, increasing access to the internet, and organizations like Citizen OS who are dedicated to empowering the public are opening such new ways to shape policies that are inclusive and borderless. It may be only a matter of time before we see to democracy a truly global democratic process.

Resource: e-estonia

CAN AI BE A FAIR JUDGE IN COURT? ESTONIA THINKS SO

25/03/2019

GOVERNMENT USUALLY ISN’T the place to look for innovation in IT or new technologies like artificial intelligence. But Ott Velsberg might change your mind. As Estonia’s chief data officer, the 28-year-old graduate student is overseeing the tiny Baltic nation’s push to insert artificial intelligence and machine learning into services provided to its 1.3 million citizens.

“We want the government to be as lean as possible,” says the wiry, bespectacled Velsberg, an Estonian who is writing his PhD thesis at Sweden’s Umeå University on using the Internet of Things and sensor data in government services. Estonia’s government hired Velsberg last August to run a new project to introduce AI into various ministries to streamline services offered to residents.

Deploying AI is crucial, he says. “Some people worry that if we lower the number of civil employees, the quality of service will suffer. But the AI agent will help us.” About 22 percent of Estonians work for the government; that’s about average for European countries, but higher than the 18 percent rate in the US.

Siim Sikkut, Estonia’s chief information officer, began piloting several AI-based projects at agencies in 2017, before hiring Velsberg last year. Velsberg says Estonia has deployed AI or machine learning in 13 places where an algorithm has replaced government workers.

For example, inspectors no longer check on farmers who receive government subsidies to cut their hay fields each summer. Satellite images taken by the European Space Agency each week from May to October are fed into a deep-learning algorithm originally developed by the Tartu Observatory. The images are overlaid onto a map of fields where farmers receive the hay-cutting subsidies to prevent them from turning forests over time.

Recourse: wired

Protecting democracy and the digital way of life, with cyber diplomat Heli Tiirmaa-Klaar

January 2019

by Federico Plantera

Few fields generate divisive trends internationally as much as the cybersphere. With the emergence of information society and its establishment reaching full maturity, advantages come together with risks.

As the digital becomes more and more positively pervasive in our everyday existence, malicious actors also have the chance to exploit eventual weaknesses of vulnerable cyber subjects to shake the stability of our democracies at their very core. Developing strategies and antibodies against such threats become fundamental not only to shield the society on the outside but also to strengthen our own digital way of life.

Introductions should not be necessary in this case, but sometimes we can let pride prevail. Heli Tiirmaa-Klaar is the Ambassador-at-Large for Cyber Security at the Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Over ten years of high-level experience in cyber-affairs on her side, including positions at NATO and the EU, made her one of POLITICO’s game changers likely to shape our world in 2019.

In a world that sees alliances and blocs realign along specific patterns, Ambassador Tiirmaa-Klaar can help us collect our thoughts and get a grasp of what awaits advanced democracies this year. When big political actors join the playground, there’s always a lot at stake.

Heli Tiirmaa-Klaar, Estonia’s Ambassador at Large for Cyber Security

When it comes to cyberspace regulation, Western powers seem to head towards a certain direction, other countries to another. Are we witnessing the emergence of a new, cyber cold war?

I would not say that there is a new cyber cold war emerging. However, it is true that, when it comes to global cyber issues,  countries often project their existing political views to this relatively new field. Authoritarian countries promote government control over the free Internet, and democratic countries would like to see an open and free cyberspace with free flow of information. It is clear that the conventional power dynamics from the last century are still visible. However, we are seeing many emerging powers in the global arena that are making the polarisation less clear. This is also illustrated by the fact that many nations see the value of the open cyberspace for their social and economic development, indicating a clear interest in making their voice heard, as well as their willingness to contribute to the global discussions on cyber issues.

What are the main threats that states and democracies see ahead, today, to their cybersecurity?

There are many issue-areas that states are currently working to solve. Since 2016, election security, disinformation and large-scale cyber operations have shifted the focus of what states are now trying to regulate in cyberspace. The common denominator is the fact that we need to assure that state actors know that what they are doing in the cyberspace is taken seriously and, in case their actions and intentions could be considered harmful to other states, that there is a clear response. Therefore, many states have already developed – or are in the process of developing – robust attribution and response mechanisms.

Since cybersecurity breaches can have serious consequences, the response to the perpetrator should aim at reducing the possibility of occurrence of any among such actions, which is why the response mechanisms should not only be limited to cyber means but also include political steps.

Additionally, cybercrime is a growing concern, particularly in light of the recent large-scale cybercrime cases, such as NotPetya and WannaCry. Although the two named incidents have been attributed to state actors, cybercrime on a smaller scale can also be a threatcoming from non-state actors. This is the primary reason why the EU is constantly advocating the recognition of the Convention on Cybercrime, as well as the establishment of domestic cybercrime legislation in countries where the current legislative system would be powerless against cybercrime.

With the elections to renew the European Parliament in spring this year, do you feel like European countries need to increase the level of readiness towards cyber threats?

The upcoming European Parliament elections in May this year will definitely bring election security and, within it, internet-enabled election meddling into the limelight. The key elements of concern also addressed by the European Commission already in September 2018 included preparedness for online manipulation. This is why greater transparencyin online political advertisements is needed. At the same time, awareness of the micro-level of news consumers is necessary.

In some of the previous elections in the EU, and also outside the Union, we have witnessed some scandalous stories emerging only shortly before the elections. Any signs that look out of the ordinary should be treated cautiously. Now more than ever people need to use common sense when coming across stories online from unverified sources.

On the other hand, the strong suit of the European Parliament elections is the fragmentation of the election structure – it is more difficult to influence elections in the EU as a whole because each member state requires a different approach, although the potential threat against some of the key member states is always there and greater than in others.

Estonia has witnessed already what it means to experience a cyberattack (2007). Is this a chance for us to establish or reaffirm our position internationally at the forefront of the fight, legal and technical, for safer cyberspace?

The 2007 cyberattacks were the turning point for Estonia’s internal cybersecurity policy development. Although we had set up our own national Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) already in 2006, the events indicated many of the key elements that had to be either built up or improved significantly. Does the fact that we have contributed to improving our systems set us before other countries in the field? I believe that somewhat yes.

We have developed hugely since 2007 and due to our relatively small and dynamic digital ecosystem, it has been easy to keep our systems up to date and running even at times of some global large-scale cyber ransom cases. Which, however, did not affect Estonian organizations and this shows our strong effort to prevent cyber disruptions has been successful.

Some of our domestic structures have been constantly modified according to the changing threat environment. We have adopted the third generation Cybersecurity Strategy for 2019-2022 that is focusing on increasing the technological and organizational capacities throughout our entire digital ecosystem. We have already a list of elements that are being improved not for the first time and we are glad to share the experience with countries that are in the starting point with their own cybersecurity developments.

Let’s end on a lighter note: how does it feel to be included in Politico’s Class of 2019 among next year’s doers?

POLITICO’s news came as a very positive surprise to me. 2018 ended with an exceptionally busy period that has hopefully paved the way forward for our plans for this year. Cybersecurity is not an issue that will go away, but only grow in importance. We’ll need to make sure existing international law is applied in cyberspace and the norms of responsible behaviour for countries are clear and rigorously upheld.

Source: e-estonia

Estonia’s Online Voting Would Solve A Lot Of Our Election Problems

 By alev Leetaru

As US voters went to the polls Tuesday, many encounteredthe myriad inevitable breakdowns of America’s obsolete voting technology. From machines running versions of Windows that were discontinued half a decade ago to malfunctioning scanners and even missing power cords, not to mention lines snaking around the block, voting in America today can be a disaster. It doesn’t have to be this way and Estonia’s electronic voting system offers a vision of what voting of the future will look like.

Despite its small size, Estonia has become a global model of the power of a fully digital government to serve its citizens. While the US helped usher in the modern web and brought the world everything from search engines to social networks, it has focused nearly exclusively on commercializing the web as a consumer product. It was Estonia that pioneered how to harness the web for governance.

Estonia offers a truly remarkable story of what is possible when a Silicon Valley mindset is applied to reimagining how governments can serve their citizens. Instead of focusing a nation’s engineers on how to get their fast food faster or a luxury chauffeur on demand or an internet connected organic juicer, Estonia shows what happens when you instead focus on how to use the digital world to power a democracy. In Estonia it takes just a few mouse clicks and less than five minutes to file one’s taxes, about the time it takes to place an online shopping order here in the US.

For all the talk in the US over the past decade of revolutionizing our governmental functions through technology, the reality has been disappointing, to put it mildly.

Instead, in Estonia, nearly every interaction an Estonian citizen has with their government can be conducted online today, including voting. Estonia’s online voting, called “i-Voting” is used today by more than 30% of its citizens. In 2005 the country became the first in the world to hold national elections using online voting, following two years later with the first online parliamentary election voting.

In Estonia’s system citizens can vote from the comfort of their own homes, including from abroad while traveling. Unlike the electronic voting machines used in the US, Estonia’s system is completely web-based, meaning voters use their own computers. Each citizen’s unique cryptographic identity, stored on their smart identity card, certifies their vote.

Imagine in the US, if instead of waiting an hour at a polling station for a half-broken machine using software that was discontinued half a decade ago, you could just pull up your web browser and vote from home. This would be especially powerful for the nation’s rural voters and those without easy transportation to their assigned polling station.

Estonia’s model even takes into account concerns over vote buying and coercion. Voters are permitted to vote as many times as they like during the assigned voting period, with only the most recent vote counting. While multiple voting is rare, it allows voters to change their minds as new information emerges, unlike in the US where advance voting is fixed in time, even if new information about a candidate emerges the day before the election.

In the US once you cast your vote it is out of your hands and you must blindly trust that election officials do not lose, discard or discount your voice. As voters discovered with Florida’s “hanging chads,” even if you cast your vote it may not ultimately be counted and you’ll have no idea it was your vote that was thrown away.

Estonia solves this problem by allowing citizens to vote from their computer and separately log into the electoral website using their smartphone to verify that their vote was received and correctly recorded for the proper candidates. This adds an additional level of security not found in traditional electronic voting systems. If an attacker manages to place malware on electronic voting systems in the US, they can silently change votes without the voter being aware. In Estonia’s system your smartphone is connected directly to the central electoral database showing you the actual vote that was recorded for you. This means that even if the computer from which you cast your vote has been secretly infected or hacked with software designed to alter your vote, you can verify that your vote was received correctly by the government.

For those who don’t wish to use digital voting, traditional paper voting is still fully available.

If voting in the US no longer required a physical trip to a polling station or requesting and mailing a paper ballot, imagine how much easier it would be to mobilize the legions of voters who have become accustomed to conducting their entire lives online. From born-digital millennials who prefer online services on through those who don’t have easy transportation to a polling station, offering web-based voting could dramatically reduce barriers to having our voices heard. In Estonia, the percent of voters over age 55 casting their local election votes online has nearly doubled from 15% to 27%.

With online voting, all votes are stored and tallied centrally, meaning that once polls close the results can be announced rapidly and without the uncertainty and weeks-long recounts of paper ballots.

Putting this all together, for more than a decade Estonia has proven the effortlessness and security of online voting, offering a model for the world that perhaps one day the US may embrace. Just imagine what the American government of the future might look like if the engineers that brought us the modern web spent a little less time creating web-connected organic juicers and a bit more time redesigning our obsolete paper-obsessed bureaucracy. Estonia offers us a vision of this incredible future.

Based in Washington, DC, I founded my first internet startup the year after the Mosaic web browser debuted, while still in eighth grade, and have spent the last 20 years working to reimagine how we use data to understand the world around us at scales and in ways never before.

Resourse: Forbes