Most Americans -- myself included -- think we live in the greatest country on earth. After all, we have the biggest economy, the most powerful military, the most pervasive popular culture, and, of course, the American Dream. We've got Wall Street and Silicon Valley, Walmart and Amazon, Hollywood and Nashville. We have -- well, we used to have -- the biggest city, the tallest building, and the largest manufacturing output. But when it comes to some of the basics, we're not doing so well. Take health care, for example. If you listen to politicians, we have the best health care in the world. And, indeed, if you have enough money (or really good insurance), happen to live in the right zip code, and manage to stumble upon the right doctors/hospitals, that's true. You can get the best health care in the world here. But fail any one of those qualifiers, maybe not...
Estonia
See the following -
European Commissioner Outlines Open Source Priorities
The Commissioner welcomed developments in open source throughout public administrations in Europe to seize the economic and innovative potential of open source. These include the Action Plan on Free Software and Digital Commons in France, the initiatives in Estonia, Spain and Italy, as well as the newly created Centre for Digital Sovereignty in Germany. According to the Commissioner, several factors are needed to use the potential of open source and to reach the political goals of the EU: nurturing a tech startup culture, utilising the digital single market for lean and sustainable tech industry, overcoming planned obsolescence, pooling the efforts of the EU’s Member States for technological independence and improving cybersecurity.
- Login to post comments
America's Dismal International Rankings - Time to Innovate Our Way Out of Our Messes
- Login to post comments
Blockchain Startup to Secure 1 Million e-Health Records in Estonia
Data security startup Guardtime has announced a partnership with the Estonian eHealth Foundation that will see it deploy a blockchain-based system to secure over 1 million patient healthcare records. Under the deal, the foundation will integrate Guardtime's keyless signature infrastructure (KSI) blockchain into the foundation's Oracle database engine to provide "real-time visibility" into the state of patient records...
- Login to post comments
Controversial: The Future is Data Integrity, Not Confidentiality
The key to the digital future is about data integrity, not data confidentiality. So says Toomas Hendrik Ilves, President of Estonia, who flew into San Francisco Thursday morning to address an internet summit hosted by CloudFlare."I have AB blood," he said by way of example. "I don't particularly care that people know that. But if somehow that information was changed, well then I could end up dead..."
- Login to post comments
Data Management for Large-scale COVID-19 Immunization: This is all not as simple as it seems
There is a global race for the development of a vaccine for the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19. Finding a vaccine that works and receives approval is only part of the process. There are a series of other steps that need to be taken so that the vaccine can be delivered. These include the mass production of the vaccine, shipment, administration and record-keeping. This may be even more complex as there may be several vaccines. In this article we review some of these issues with a particular focus on the United States.
- Login to post comments
Driving innovation with Open Source
For the last ten years, Estonia has been ranked as the ‘Best of the Best’ for e-government applications by the United Nations. Sikkut said part of their success can be attributed to the use of open source in projects such as: e-health; e-police and e-justice; national citizens and business portals; e-procurement; document exchange systems; and digital culture portals and systems. Read More »
- Login to post comments
Estonia Is Using the Technology Behind Bitcoin to Secure 1 Million Health Records
Guardtime, a startup that uses technology similar to that underpinning bitcoin to secure public and private data, has signed a deal with the Estonian government to secure all the country's 1 million health records with its technology. The deal with the Estonian e-Health Authority comes alongside a partnership with Estonian Information Systems Authority, which will see more government data move to Guardtime's technology...
- Login to post comments
Estonia Using Blockchain to Secure Health Records
The Estonian Government will use Blockchain technology to protect citizens’ electronic health records. Digital transactions made with Blockchain technology are irreversibly recorded. The records are impossible to change because they are shared globally across thousands of computers in real time through a distributed ledger. While Blockchain has largely been used to secure payments, Estonia shows that it can be more widely implemented...
- Login to post comments
Estonian Government, Guardtime Accelerate Adoption of Blockchain Technology to Secure 1M Patient Health Records
Guardtime, the first and only platform for ensuring the integrity of data and systems at industrial scale, today announced a partnership with the Estonian eHealth Foundation to accelerate blockchain-based security, transparency, auditability and governance for the lifecycle management for patient healthcare records. Guardtime will also bring their Keyless Signature Infrastructure (KSI) technology to all levels of Estonian eGovernment infrastructure through a frame cooperation agreement with the Estonian Information Systems Authority (RIA)...
- Login to post comments
Estonian Schools Piloting Open Source Software
Schools in Estonia’s capital Tallinn are piloting a new program, gradually moving to PC workstations running on free and open source software. Students, teachers, school administration and kindergartens’ staff members are using LibreOffice, Ubuntu-Linux and other open source tools, saving millions of dollars on software fees. As computers have become ubiquitous, schools are basically forced to incorporate computers in the educational process. But buying a computer for a school isn’t as easy as simply buying a computer – you have to buy useful, licensed software through public auctions, and that often costs a lot of money...
- Login to post comments
Europe Pledges Support for Open Source Government Solutions
Estonia has long been the digital envy of many European Union member states. An effective and open policy approach to digital government has yielded extraordinary results—from 90%+ uptake of electronic identification (E-ID) solutions to an open source e-government platform (X-Road) to meet the ever-growing expectations of IT-savvy citizens as well as other countries wanting to pool IT across borders. Perhaps the most significant development for open source supporters is the explicit recognition of open source software (OSS) as a key driver towards achieving ambitious governmental digitisation goals by 2020. Under the declaration, European goverments will...
- Login to post comments
Guardtime Secures Over a Million Estonian Healthcare Records on the Blockchain
Guardtime, a cyber-security provider that uses blockchain systems to ensure the integrity of data, is partnering with the Estonian e-Health Authority to secure over a million health care records. Guardtime uses Keyless Signature Infrastructure (KSI), a blockchain technology that provides massive-scale data authentication without reliance on centralised trust authorities. Unlike traditional approaches that depend on asymmetric key cryptography, KSI uses only hash-function cryptography, allowing verification to rely only on the security of hash functions and the availability of a public ledger...
- Login to post comments
Maryland and Estonian Civilians Take Up Arms Against Hackers
Maryland has started a volunteer netwarfare squad that the Estonian ambassador likens to her country's groundbreaking civilian cyber reserve, which was assembled after neighboring Russia allegedly shut down the former Soviet state's Internet access in 2007. Read More »
- Login to post comments
OpenID Connect May Usher In A New Era Of Federated Online Identity
OpenID Connect is designed to replace username/password authentication. The protocol, in use by Google and others, may solve governments' needs to authenticate users accessing digital services...
- Login to post comments
We Have Seen the Future, and It Is...Estonia?
Like me, you may not have been paying close attention to what has been going on in Estonia. That's probably something many of us should change, at least anyone interested in our digital future(s). OK, I have to admit: I had to look Estonia up on a map. I knew it was in northern Europe, and that it had been involved in the whole U.S.S.R. debacle. As it turns out, Estonia sits just across the Gulf of Finland from -- that's right -- Finland, and across the Baltic Sea from Sweden. Skype was invented there, if you're keeping score. More to the point, over the last twenty years it has evolved into arguable the most advanced digital society in the world.
- Login to post comments