Reflection 1

Even though I know little about Estonia prior the class on Thursday, the concept of e-Estonia raised my interest as it sounds sort of idealism and novel to me. E-Estonia is commonly referred to a movement by Estonia government to facilitate citizen interactions with the state through the use of electronic solutions. It provides e-services such as e-Election, e-Business, e-Banking and etc. In late 2014, Estonia became the first country to grant electronic residency to people from other countries, which was referred as e-Residency. e-Residency provides access to the e-services mentioned above but it is not equivalent to physical residency. During my initial research, e-Estonia has constantly reminded me of Benedict Anderson’s claim that nation state is an imagined political community. While Anderson explains “imagined” as people in one geographical nation state shared the image of communion even though they do not see each other physically, e-Estonia has extended this idea to a cyber-based context. Even though people may reside in different places around the world, they can be identified as Estonia as they obtain their e-residency. Government functions and resident responsibilities can also be executed online. Even though Estonia does not expand its physical border, the nation state of Estonia is growing bigger with the development of its e-society, e-Estonia.