Day 9 - Santa in the Baltics, why is he so fond of e-Estonia?

To be a such a small and young country, Estonia's open and stable economy is characterized by adaptability and innovation. The country regained its independence in 1991 and the development has been extremely fast. But what’s is it in for Santa? Nowadays Santa and all the other tech-enthusiasts look over the Baltic Sea when fetching after new innovations. Fondia Baltic and Santa have quite a lot in common when you look into the reasons why we are so excited about Estonia.

One of the Santa’s most used application during the production year is Skype. Estonian geeks developed the code behind Skype in August 2003. Nowadays Santa keeps connected beck home during his travels with Skype and keeps the operations running with effective instant messaging with the app.

Estonia has among the world’s zippiest broadband speeds and holds the record for start-ups per person. New innovations keep on coming to the markets in record speed. Estonia’s 1.3m citizens and frequent visitors (and Santa as one of them) pay for parking spaces with their mobile phones. Very useful during the short Christmas Eve as Mr. Clause can spare his temper when being able to skip fetching after a parking slot. Filing an annual tax return online, as 95% of Estonians do, takes about five minutes. Even Santa takes the advantage of the governmental online services after the implementation of Estonian e-residency.

In 2000, internet access was declared to be a human right in Estonia, resulting the web spread into the every corner of the compact country. Free Wi-Fi became commonplace. Rubber stamps, carbon paper and long queues gave way to “e-government”. Our Tallinn team is about to guide us into the e- Estonia in more detail soon as they explain how Mr. Clause gained the Estonian e-citizenship.