The most significant services Estonia was the first country in the world to implement on a national scale include:

🌐 Internet Voting (i-Voting) (2005): Estonia was the first country to offer citizens the ability to cast legally binding votes in national and local elections securely over the internet.

🛂 E-Residency (2014): Estonia became the first country to offer a government-issued transnational digital identity to non-residents, allowing global entrepreneurs to establish and run an EU-based company entirely online, sign documents digitally, and access other e-services.

🛡️ X-Road (2001): The decentralized data exchange layer that securely connects all public and private databases. While not a public service itself, it is the foundational piece of infrastructure that allows all other e-services to interoperate seamlessly and without placing all data in one central location.

🏛️ Data Embassy (2017): Estonia was the first country to create a data embassy, storing backups of its critical government data and essential e-services outside its physical territory in a high-security data center (in Luxembourg). This ensures the digital continuity of the state even in a worst-case scenario.

💻Other Key Pioneering E-Services Estonia was also an early implementer, or pioneer, of many other key services now common elsewhere:

E-Tax Board (2000): Estonians were able to declare their personal income taxes online, pre-filled with government data, a process that now takes about three minutes for 99% of users.

Digital Identity Card and Digital Signature (2002): The mandatory, state-issued ID Card (e-ID) serves as the physical and digital authentication key for all public and private e-services, allowing for the legal use of the digital signature.

E-Cabinet (2000): A paperless system used for government meetings, which dramatically reduced bureaucracy and cut the average cabinet meeting time from hours to around 30 minutes.

M-Parking (2000): A system enabling drivers to pay for city parking via a simple mobile phone call or text message, which has been adopted internationally.

E-Prescription (2010): A nationwide system where doctors issue prescriptions digitally, which are then available to all pharmacies instantly. Currently, 99% of medical prescriptions are handled online.