Idolizing Estonia

2024-01-31

The Germany public broadcaster ZDF (Link in German) "Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen", Second German Television, has a news satire program called "heute show". This program opened 2024 with a special piece about the state of the digital transformation in Germany. Among bits about villages without internet access, digital applications that result in everything being printed out regardless and the classical trying to talk with politicians who just walk away they also give some insight on what things are like in Estonia.

It is no secret that I currently live in Estonia and so I thought I'd give some thoughts on what they reported. Before I start complaining about misrepresentation I'd like to highlight one thing:
Many things are great here, just as described. I did not need to go to a customs office because paying customs on overseas imports can be done online. So it is not surprising that they found the office to be devoid of people waiting in line.

To stay on the topic of their visit the that office, I have had the questionable pleasure of three separate physical visits to authorities here, as any international student wanting to live here for more than a few months does. Not waiting in line and not having to collect a waiting number are not experiences I have made during those visits, despite heute show claiming that those things do not happen here. To be fair, I was among the big chunk of people who realized that they had to register their place of residence right before the deadline for that came up, so the line was mostly students.

Completely ridiculous is the claim made quite early in the show that "self driving busses are part of everyday live" here. I might not live in the Ülemiste innovation city complex thingy, but I still visit the technical university in the capital, so one would imagine that I'd come across this everyday life within more than a year. I am not complaining about the lack of pedestrian paced "busses" with a capacity of a small car, but about the claim that they are common here.

Now, is this misrepresentation of some minor (or not so minor) details much of an issue? Most definitely not. It gives people in Germany in this instance and around the world in general ideas of what can be done (not the busses, please) and doesn't really hurt anyone.

Before I send you off to watch the video or do something more productive I have to mention the inclusion of music played on Wintergatan's Marble Machine when showing a diagram of what public institution is in charge of which part of the digital transformation in Germany. Two brutally complex contraptions, the more elegant one of which has been declared as failed by its creator and is now being taken care of in Germany, of all places.

The heute show special can be seen in German in the ZDF Mediathek or on YouTube.