TNL Conclave: Digital Society – Lessons from Estonia

Guest speaker: Andrew Thompson

As the US and other countries struggle with everything from contact tracing to holding elections in an increasingly digital world, Estonia has embraced a “digital first” approach and provides some lessons learned. This conclave will discuss a wide-range of topics relating to digital society.

Some topics that arose in the group’s discussion:

• positive vs. negative rights
• the role of trust + consensus in digital governance
• the relative ease of assuring trust at the level of local governance/politics as opposed to at higher non-local levels.
• Incumbency as the primary hurdle to tech innovation
• Framing as prioritization instead of absolute choices:
• privacy vs security
• freedom vs material security

TNL disclaimer: this work represents experimental, exploratory, and often in-progress or preliminary efforts. One goal of the TNL is to get interesting approaches, topics, and concepts discussed and presented quickly. This work has not been peer-reviewed and is not an official RAND publication. No warranties implied or expressed, your mileage may vary, enter as often as you like.