Mobile Phones and Good Government

Good, modern, and efficient e-governance is routine in Estonia.  So is the use of the latest technology for everything from internet voting to buying movie tickets.  U.S. Secretary of State Clinton, in a speech she delivered on Internet Freedom this past January, called for using modern information technology to empower citizens and circumventing politically motiovated censorship.  As an example, Secretary Clinton challenged innovators to build “a mobile phone application that would allow people to rate government ministries, including ours, on their responsiveness and efficiency and also to ferret out and report corruption.”  What about it, Estonian innovators?  Your country is already working on democratic society development in many places.  This could be another important contribution from E-stonia.

Unemployment – Innovation – Education

I am going to Tartu, the second largest city in Estonia, on March 16 and 17, to meet among many others, students and faculty at the University of Tartu.  At the University, I will speak to the issue of innovation as part of the answer to one of the most painful problems besetting people around the globe – unemployment.  No single proposed solution can hope to “fix” too few jobs in the United States, in Estonia, or anywhere else.  But creative and energetic private sectors, supported by sound government policies, must be one of the components of healthy new job markets.  The fields where we need the next leaps in technology and knowledge have been much talked about:  renewable energy, information technology and infrastructure security,  food security, and global health.  There are many more.  Education and research are at the base of all future advances.  That is why I will also be meeting with Estonia’s Minister of Education and Research and using Tartu University as a platform to address these issues.  No country is too small to innovate and no country is too large to unravel the complexities of  its economy and society.  Estonia and the U.S. must join in the next innovation revolution.