The Wired World of E-stonia.(Brief Article)

The state chancellery of Estonia, looming over Tallinn's medieval Old Town, is an 18th-century palace. But inside, check out the world's most high-tech cabinet room, where ministers gather every Tuesday in a tableau that begs the question, "What's wrong with this picture?" The bottled water is there. But no notepads, pens or pencils--just the latest to-die- for flat-screen computers. This e-cabinet doesn't just look cool. It is cool--and it promotes efficiency and saves money, too.

More than anywhere else in the world, Estonia's rulers let their fingers do their talking. Using Web-based software developed by Estonian IT companies, ministers do much of their pre-meeting governmental commenting and amending online--cutting conference times by a third. And because their aides aren't lugging reams of documents, the e-cabinet saves a couple hundred thousand euros in paper costs each year.

Hail, E-stonia! The place is obsessively connected. Per capita Internet access exceeds that in Britain or Germany. Close to 90 percent of bank transactions are done online or on WAP-enabled mobile phones. Why? "We had to start from scratch," explains Arvo Ott, head of Estonia's Information Systems Department. After decades of communism, the Estonians were so far ...