Estonia’s Digital Affairs Minister: Switzerland never had a ‘burning need’ to go digital Estonia has become a global model for digital government. Minister Liisa Pakosta says Switzerland already has everything it needs to follow a similar path – except the sense of urgency that drove Estonia’s transformation. Estonia is widely regarded as one of the world’s most advanced digital societies, promoting itself with the slogan “0% bureaucracy and 100% digital services”. Citizens can vote, sign legal documents, access healthcare records and even divorce online using a national digital identity. Switzerland, by contrast, is still grappling with fragmented digital public services. The rollout of the electronic patient record has been slow and uneven across the country. Swiss voters rejected the country’s first national electronic identity (e-ID) in a referendum in 2021, largely due to privacy concerns and the role of private companies, before narrowly approving a fully state-run eID in 2025. How did the Baltic nation of just 1.3 million people become a global model for digital government? And what trade-offs come with building a state increasingly powered by artificial intelligence (AI)? According to Estonia’s Minister of Justice and Digital Affairs Liisa Pakosta, the answer lies more in history than in technology. “Switzerland is a very wealthy country,” she tells Swissinfo on the sidelines of the UN Global Dialogue on AI Governance in Geneva. “The only obstacle you have is that you haven’t had the burning need for change.” After regaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, Estonia faced a deep economic crisis. Inflation surged and public resources were scarce. “We started not even from zero, but from a deep minus,” Pakosta says. “We had to find the cheapest, most effective and quickest way of governance,” she recalls. “When you are looking for the least expensive and most efficient way