One year on from the start of the Covid-19 pandemic many of us who might previously have been reluctant to try out new digital technologies are now accomplished Zoomers, Teams masters and Slack supremos.

Much of the technology that has kept us connected and working has been in place for several years – it took the pandemic and the subsequent forced change to our lives for us at an individual, business and governmental level to adopt it at scale.

Having adopted technology and digital ways of working through necessity, how are organisations ensuring the positives wrought by digital transformation are fully embedded as we move back to a greater balance between being remote and being together? And how are all these newly adopted technologies being integrated?

Looking abroad for inspiration on digital adoption, there is much that can be learnt from the trailblazer that is Estonia.

What other countries can learn from Estonia

When creating a new system following Independence in the 90s the country didn’t have ‘the luxury and the resources to be inefficient’, many years later the ‘number of things Estonians can do online, linked up through one system, is astonishing’ said Monocle in a recent profile on the country’s President.

As Cloud Direct have highlighted the journey has been remarkable: In 1991 half the population didn’t have landlines, in 2000 the country declared the internet to be a human right and in 2005 became the first country to offer internet voting in a national election. And in 2014 they started offering e-residency so anyone in the world can take advantage of their digital first approach.

The savings are significant too, the digital signature that is legally equivalent to a pen-on-paper signature is estimated to save around 2% of the GDP each year.

A key takeaway is their policy of ‘once only’ meaning people are never asked to fill in the same form twice – once you have provided information, whether it be for voting or taxes that’s it – which makes for a great user experience.

As people become ever more accustomed to doing things digitally, like they do in Estonia, expectations around the user experience of websites will grow, if you are unsure as to whether your website is operating as it should or if you already know it needs enhancing get in touch with our developers today.