Looking Back -- the Internet and Eastern Europe
Yesterday members of the Berkman Center and the Oxford Internet Institute met with some leading Internet thinkers and practitioners from Eastern Europe to discuss the role technology has played in their political transformations.
Ethan Zuckerman blogged the day and its many highlights - like meetings with Silver Meikar of Estonia, Henrik Schneider of Hungary, and Andrij “Andy” Ihnatov of Maidan International - with incredible detail. From his blog -
Andrij “Andy” Ihnatov is the president of Ukranian non-governmental organization Maidan International, a key player in the Ukranian Orange Revolution. Started in 2002, Maidan is one of two key political websites in Ukraine. And Andy tells us that the other key site - Ukrainska Pravda - was one of the proximate causes of the Orange Revolution. As Andy puts it, “2002 is the year the Ukranian transition to democracy stalled”. The government became increasingly corrupt and less transparent. And media was increasingly either censored by the government or self-censored - “media was operating in a mode so as not to outrage the government”. With rare exceptions, there was very little investigative journalism, especially journalism willing to challenge the government. To keep reading, click here.
Our second “case study” for the day did a nice job of giving both the cyberoptimists and cyberskeptics something to cheer about. Silver Meikar is a technology entrepreneur, a blogger and a former member of the Estonian parliament. He’s an expert of the phenomenon of “E-stonia”, the emergence of this formerly Soviet Baltic state as a technology powerhouse, producing both Skype and Kazaa. He’s a skeptic, too, with numbers to back up his questions about whether Estonia’s really ready for e-government. Net penetration in Estonia is amazingly high. 52% of the population reports using the Internet regularly. 35% have computers at home, and every government bureacrat, no matter their rank, has a computer on their desk and an email address. Silver believes this is a result of a strong educational system, lots of influence from Germany, Finland and Sweden, and a commitment to overhaul the state bureacracy after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In some senses, Estonians are huge users of online services. Over 50% bank online. And with an online tax system that lets people pay an annual bill online in seconds (it has your salary, your investment income, etc. prefilled for you, online…), the vast majority of Estonians file their taxes online. But while lots of other aspects of Estonian life have gone online, they’re rarely used. To keep reading, click here.
Ethan Zuckerman blogged the day and its many highlights - like meetings with Silver Meikar of Estonia, Henrik Schneider of Hungary, and Andrij “Andy” Ihnatov of Maidan International - with incredible detail. From his blog -
Andrij “Andy” Ihnatov is the president of Ukranian non-governmental organization Maidan International, a key player in the Ukranian Orange Revolution. Started in 2002, Maidan is one of two key political websites in Ukraine. And Andy tells us that the other key site - Ukrainska Pravda - was one of the proximate causes of the Orange Revolution. As Andy puts it, “2002 is the year the Ukranian transition to democracy stalled”. The government became increasingly corrupt and less transparent. And media was increasingly either censored by the government or self-censored - “media was operating in a mode so as not to outrage the government”. With rare exceptions, there was very little investigative journalism, especially journalism willing to challenge the government. To keep reading, click here.
Our second “case study” for the day did a nice job of giving both the cyberoptimists and cyberskeptics something to cheer about. Silver Meikar is a technology entrepreneur, a blogger and a former member of the Estonian parliament. He’s an expert of the phenomenon of “E-stonia”, the emergence of this formerly Soviet Baltic state as a technology powerhouse, producing both Skype and Kazaa. He’s a skeptic, too, with numbers to back up his questions about whether Estonia’s really ready for e-government. Net penetration in Estonia is amazingly high. 52% of the population reports using the Internet regularly. 35% have computers at home, and every government bureacrat, no matter their rank, has a computer on their desk and an email address. Silver believes this is a result of a strong educational system, lots of influence from Germany, Finland and Sweden, and a commitment to overhaul the state bureacracy after the fall of the Berlin Wall. In some senses, Estonians are huge users of online services. Over 50% bank online. And with an online tax system that lets people pay an annual bill online in seconds (it has your salary, your investment income, etc. prefilled for you, online…), the vast majority of Estonians file their taxes online. But while lots of other aspects of Estonian life have gone online, they’re rarely used. To keep reading, click here.