Browsing by Author "Solvak, Mihkel"

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A Case Study of the Public Sector Digital Ecosystem in Estonia
(IEEE Xplore, 2024-05-03) Solvak, Mihkel; Lauringson, Ave
We discuss the core features of the Estonian digital ecosystem that have led to an exponential growth of in public digital service usage and started a move into the so-called post-digital society. A universal electronic identification system ensures that all citizens have default access to digital services. Uniform universal access is complemented with a distributed data exchange layer called X-Road, which allows service owners to engage in peer to peer data exchanges. Such a system has created positive dynamics from service demand (citizens) and supply (service owners) side. The secure digital identity enjoys high trust, which leads to high service usage rates and increased demand for more digitalized service. That same secure universal access and a data exchange system that is designed to create network effects, ensures a large immediate customer base for service owners, which makes data intensive digital service development faster and more cost-efficient. Finally, the frequent exchange of technologists between the private and public sector ensures rolling out of services and policies, like the e-residency program, that create new international customers for otherwise national digital services.
Automated impact assessment - How digitizing government enables rapid and tailor-made policy responses
(Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), 2022-09-14) Maksimova, Mariia; Alishani, Art; Solvak, Mihkel; Krimmer, Robert
As interest in the digital transformation of public administration grows, the main challenge remains to improve government governance systems and integrate a wider range of evidence into decisionmaking processes. The successful digitalization and application of such approaches improves the quality, responsiveness and flexibility of public administrations. The digialtization of processes has made it possible to use micro-level data to assess the impact of a policy or program and apply the feedback to improve the design and delivery of public services. Evidence-based policy-making evaluates programs based on their visible impacts. Large-scale data collected through digitized governance, coupled with econometric impact assessment, provides an ideal working toolkit for this. However, the current situation of European governments is one of slow adoption, as they are often slow to respond to new challenges. This is due to the static one-off impact assessment approaches used, the results of which quickly become outdated. With further digitalization, improvement of systems, and a rapidly changing situation, there is a need to speed up institutions’ ability to quickly draw working solutions to offset the effects of unexpected events in society and economy and react without delays if policy effects dissipate. This paper demonstrates how a high level of digitalization in government allows addressing such issues by automating causal impact assessment and making it a continuous part of the service delivery. The use case is an automated system for assessing active labour market policies in Estonia using individual-level data from government digital registers. Building on this, it shows how impact assessment automation depends on automatically generated data, only available due to the digitalization of other public services, and how versatile it is when it comes to proving casual evidence in a suddenly changing environment.
Data-Driven Personalized E-Government Services: Literature Review and Case Study
(Springer International Publishing, 2021-09-07) Maksimova, Mariia; Solvak, Mihkel; Krimmer, Robert
Better targeted and more personalized service offering to citizens has the potential to make state-citizen interactions more seamless, reduce inefficiencies in service provision, and lower barriers to service access for the less informed and disadvantaged social groups. What constitutes personalization and how the service offering can be customized to meet individual user demand is, however, much less clear and underdeveloped partially due to the technical and legal dependencies involved. The paper gives an overview of how personalization and customization of digital service offering have been discussed in the literature and systematizes the main strand emerging from this. It follows up with a case study of the Estonian X-road log data as one potential way to detect latent user demand emerging from an experienced life-event that could form a basis for letting users define their service needs as holistically as possible. The results show the existence of distinct service usage clusters, with specific user profiles behind them, a clear indication of latent demand that leads to a simultaneous consumption of otherwise independent digital services.
Electronic Voting: 6th International Joint Conference, E-Vote-ID 2021, virtual event, October 5-8, 2021
(Springer Cham, 2021-09-28) Krimmer, Robert; Volkamer, Melanie; Duenas-Cid, David; Kulyk, Oksana; Rønne, Peter; Solvak, Mihkel; Germann, Micha
This book constitutes the proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Electronic Voting, E-Vote-ID 2021, held online -due to COVID -19- in Bregenz, Austria, in October 2021. The 14 full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 55 submissions. The conference collected the most relevant debates on the development of Electronic Voting, from aspects relating to security and usability through to practical experiences and applications of voting systems, as well as legal, social or political aspects.
European Interoperability Landscape Report 2022
(Nordic Institute for Interoperability Solutions, 2022) Krimmer, Robert; Solvak, Mihkel; Alishani, Art; Dedovic, Stefan; Schmidt, Carsten; Castle, Salina
The delivery of cross-border digital public services largely depends on the ability of public administrations and businesses to transfer data across borders. Therefore, access to trusted, interoperable, and secure data-exchange solutions is essential for delivering cross-border services but is also crucial for establishing the Single Digital Gateway (SDG) and building a functioning European Digital Single Market (DSM). Numerous projects, alliances, and partnerships have been implemented to explore and develop different solutions that would support the creation of an interoperable future for Europe. Thus far, a clear understanding of cross-border data exchange initiatives is lacking, especially regarding roles, specifications, interdependencies, and technological differences between initiatives. This study report aims to start mapping European cross-border data-exchange solutions and initiatives, analyse the status of adoption, and investigate different aspects of these initiatives pertaining to legal, commercial, and technical specifications. Also, the report discusses the future outlook of European cross-border digital public services. Findings from this study could provide valuable insights for policymakers, solution owners, and service providers as it informs them about the interoperability, extensibility, and sustainability of European cross-border data exchange initiatives and projects.
Internet voting in Estonia 2005–2019: Evidence from eleven elections
(2022) Ehin, Piret; Solvak, Mihkel; Willemson, Jan; Vinkel, Priit
Internet voting is a highly contested topic in electoral studies. This article examines Internet voting in Estonia over 15 years and 11 nation-wide elections. It focuses on the following questions: How is Internet voting organized and used in Estonia? How have the Estonian Internet voting system and its usage evolved over time? What are the preconditions and consequences of large-scale deployment of Internet voting? The results suggest that the rapid uptake and burgeoning usage rates reflect the system's embeddedness in a highly developed digital state and society. Through continuous technological and legal innovation and development, Estonia has built an advanced Internet voting system that complies with normative standards for democratic elections and is widely trusted and used by the voters. Internet voting has not boosted turnout in a setting where voting was already easily accessible. Neither has it created digital divides: Internet voting in Estonia has diffused to the extent that socio-demographic characteristics no longer predict usage. This, combined with massive uptake, reduces incentives for political parties to politicize the novel voting mode.
Internet voting: The role of personality traits and trust across three parliamentary elections in Estonia
(Springer, 2022-09-24) Sindermann, Cornelia; Rozgonjuk, Dmitri; Solvak, Mihkel; Realo, Anu; Vassil, Kristjan
Some countries offer options to vote in elections remotely via the internet. However, not all voters take up this opportunity. This study investigates the role of the Five-Factor Model personality traits in the choice to use internet voting, and the potential mediating effects of trust in internet voting, controlling for sociodemographic variables. Survey data collected after national elections in Estonia in 2011 (N = 482), 2015 (N = 535), and 2019 (N = 546) were analyzed. Agreeableness was positively correlated with trust in internet voting in all samples. Additionally, Agreeableness was related to internet voting via trust, but not in all samples. Internet voting was predicted by higher trust in internet voting, better PC literacy, and speaking Estonian at home, across all samples. These results indicate that easy access to, and trust in, internet voting may play a bigger role in the decision to use internet voting than personality traits.
Private member’s bills in parliament – a comparative study of Finland and Estonia
(2011-10-19) Solvak, Mihkel
Parlamendisaadikute poolt algatatud seaduseelnõud moodustavad parlamentaarsetes demokraatiates reeglina kogu seadusloomest väikese osa. Enamikes sellistes süsteemides domineerivad seadusandluses seadusandliku võimu üle tegelikult valitsuse algatatud eelnõud. Sellest hoolimata on saadikud üsna aktiivsed eelnõude esitajad. Antud uuringus on vaatluse all Eestis 1999-2007 esitatud 328 ja Soomes 2003-2007 esitatud 665 sellist eelnõud. Eesti puhul võeti antud perioodil seadustena vastu 37.9% ja Soomes 4.5% neist eelnõudest. Seega esineb selge vastuolu madala edukuse ja suure algatamise sageduse vahel. Nende numbrite taustal tekib küsimus miks saadikud nii ebaratsionaalselt käituvad ja kulutavad oma aega eelnõude esitamiseks, mis suure tõenäosusega kunagi midagi reaalselt reguleerima ei hakka, sest need kas hääletatakse maha või jäävad toppama menetlusprotsessi teatud faasi ja aeguvad koos parlamendikoosseisu ametiaja lõpuga. Doktoritöö sisuks on saadikute esitatud eelnõude esitamise, sisu ja menetluse põhjalikum vaatlemine ja statistiline analüüs, mille abil püütakse anda vastus nii antud vastuolule käitumises kui ka hinnata selle võimalikke tagajärgi eelnõude sisule ja menetlemisele täiskogus. Põhiline seletav mehhanism mille kehtivust testitakse on personaalse hääle soodustamine valimissüsteemi poolt, mis motiveerib poliitikuid individualistlikult käituma tagasivalimise tõenäosuse suurendamiseks. Personaalse hääle efekt ilmnes selgelt esitamise puhul ehk saadikud kelle valimisel on see suurema tähtsusega on aktiivsemad saadikute eelnõude esitajad Eelnõude enda sisu ja hilisem menetlusprotsess sõltub aga reeglina algataja kuulumisest kas koalitsiooni või opositsiooni ridadesse. Valimissüsteemi sisene variatsioon seega struktureerib käitumist eelnõude esitamise sagedus näol, samas ei ole efektid nii tugevad, et avaldaksid mõju seadusloome etappides, mis järgnevad eelnõude esitamisele.
Sixth International Joint Conference on Electronic Voting E-Vote-ID 2021. 5-8 October 2021
(University of Tartu Press, 2021) Krimmer, Robert; Volkamer, Melanie; Duenas-Cid, David; Germann, Micha; Glondu, Stéphane; Hofer, Thomas; Krivonosova, Iuliia; Kulyk, Oksana; Martin-Rozumilowicz, Beata; Rønne, Peter; Solvak, Mihkel; Zollinger, Marie-Laure
This volume contains papers presented at E-Vote-ID 2021, the Sixth International Joint Conference on Electronic Voting, held during October 5-8, 2021. Due to the extraordinary situation provoked by Covid-19 Pandemic, the conference is held online for second consecutive edition, instead of in the traditional venue in Bregenz, Austria. E-Vote-ID Conference resulted from the merging of EVOTE and Vote-ID and counting up to 17 years since the _rst E-Vote conference in Austria. Since that conference in 2004, over 1000 experts have attended the venue, including scholars, practitioners, authorities, electoral managers, vendors, and PhD Students. The conference collected the most relevant debates on the development of Electronic Voting, from aspects relating to security and usability through to practical experiences and applications of voting systems, also including legal, social or political aspects, amongst others; turning out to be an important global referent in relation to this issue. Also, this year, the conference consisted of: · Security, Usability and Technical Issues Track · Administrative, Legal, Political and Social Issues Track · Election and Practical Experiences Track · PhD Colloquium, Poster and Demo Session on the day before the conference E-VOTE-ID 2021 received 49 submissions, being, each of them, reviewed by 3 to 5 program committee members, using a double blind review process. As a result, 27 papers were accepted for its presentation in the conference. The selected papers cover a wide range of topics connected with electronic voting, including experiences and revisions of the real uses of E-voting systems and corresponding processes in elections. We would also like to thank the German Informatics Society (Gesellschaft für Informatik) with its ECOM working group and KASTEL for their partnership over many years. Further we would like to thank the Swiss Federal Chancellery and the Regional Government of Vorarlberg for their kind support. EVote-ID 2021 conference is kindly supported through European Union's Horizon 2020 projects ECEPS (grant agreement 857622) and mGov4EU (grant agreement 959072). Special thanks go to the members of the international program committee for their hard work in reviewing, discussing, and shepherding papers. They ensured the high quality of these proceedings with their knowledge and experience.