President of Estonia, H.E. Mr. Toomas Hendrik Ilves enriched and honored International Conference on Theory and Practice of Electronic Governance in Tallinn on 26th of September. He gave a brilliant and motivating speech on e-Estonia development story after the Soviet period, spoke about e-governance and democracy and how ICT became the engine for Estonia progress. Read the abstract from his speech:

"ICT and future.Estonia’s experience in the past twenty years reflects this: we became pioneers in use of ICT in government first because it seemed the best if not only way to leapfrog decades of backwardness caused by awful Soviet rule; Information technology and its use in the public sector as well as the private became the engine of our rapid development, and enabled us to become a leader offering innovative solutions we gladly offer to others. And almost as if on cue, we also became the world’s first victim of purposive, directed, massive attacks against a nation‘s public ICT infrastructure. And, thence one of the worlds centers of cyber defense and security.

Nonetheless, we are e-believers. We are proud of being pioneers in e-government. And we are convinced that a public sector ICT approach that is citizen-centered, secure and transparent is the future of good governance in the 21st century.

Openness and democracy. Absence of transparency breeds corruption. E-tenders, publication of expenses, public sector incomes on-line all open the governing process to inspection. This is fairly elemental. Perhaps less obvious but no less important is that e-governance allows us to elimate nodes of opaque discretionary and arbitrary decision-making. Which in plainer language means that administrative decisions that in reality are non-discretionary – applications of all sorts for example – can be done online, without anyone arbitrarily having a say in the matter. More bluntly, you can’t bribe a computer, no online system can say, I’ll process this for a fee. In fact the best argument for use of ICT in government and the public sector more broadly is the cleansing effect it has. Today in Estonia, corruption remains in those areas, primarily municipal government-related, that have resisted ICT-based transparency rules regarding permits and tenders. I believe that Estonia consistently ranking as the most uncorrupt at the national level of once communist countries is directly a function of this transparency."

Read the full speech of Mr.President on presidential portal.