Ja,exactly, so I, I made my way to Estonia a bit randomly, to be honest with you, so I had started my career in Silicon Valley. I was early at YC and Dresdenback start-up and then I went to Berlin to run a venture for Rocket Internet, which is this kind of company builder VC, VC firm. And, frankly, I. Didn't like it, I wanted to do something more, more impactful. And I stumbled across a job ad on Jabbatical, when they were still kind of focused on job sabbaticals for e-residents. And I thought, it sounded super cool, I had never heard of seda innovated program. And I had once been to Estonia like ten years prior on a road trip with my dad for about twenty four hours. So I did not, did not have a real deep link to the country, but I was like, I vaguely remember the old town being beautiful. And then I read about this program and I was already in Berlin, so I said, why not. And fortunately enough, they hired me, I guess, maybe I was the only person who was willing to move to Estonia and I think it was februari, so it was, it was a little bit chilly. And when I got there, I was quite impressed, I mean, as you can imagine, an American, who grew up mostly in California, Nevada. Didn't have that much knowledge about, you know, e-government systems and not, not that much experience with anything other than, than the DMV and pretty negative. Negative relationship with government services, so I was quite impressed with, with Estonia, but. Frankly, you know, it was, it was very cool, I had done a one-year contract, I ended up staying a little bit longer, but I made great friends and I was, you know, I was still connected in some way to the country, but. When I went back to the US, during COVID, I joined this program tech congress, which takes tech people and puts them in congress. And so I started advising. Members of congress on tech policy and it was there that I was like. Oh, we are in deep trouble in the United States, like I, I did not realise how, how bad it was. And how much we lacked our knowledge of, of digital or let's say technical state capasite and so. It was from there that I decided to do some writing, partly, with the intent of talking about Estonia, but.Frankly, my, my other reason for doing this is to try and get America to, to pursue government modernisation, better. So sorry for the long winded intro, but there it is.
So, with, with the major caveat, that, you know, I'm not, I'm not in the government, I'm not, you know. I, I, I, I certainly think that so, so it does seem like from the public side that, that the focus has been on cost cutting and certainly that's where most of the media attention is, but. I have heard that there is some development of, of technology and I think on incentive side, there's one really interesting thing that I heard about, so there's the GAO, no, is it the GAO. I, I'll find the, I'll find the right, the, the right divisional, sorry, it's the GSA, not the GA. We have too many akronyms and too many agencies in the United States. And the general services administration is basically responsible for kind of broad IT. And so they put in place a program just, just a couple weeks ago, basically trying to incentivize people to, to find and eliminate waste, themselves. So I think that, I think that. You know, we, we'll see if this leads to a culture change, but I think this is an interesting idea, like starting to change the, the incentive strukture to get people to, you know, to cut waste themselves and, and to, and to, and to change the way that business is kind of usually done. Where as like, you know, you, you have very little incentive as a civil servent to say, like, even if you know that, you know, this program in my neighbors, you know, in my neighbors category, or even the one I'm working on, doesn't work, it's not effective at all. I mean, what benefit is it to you to, to cut it or to call that out and now maybe there actually is a benefit, so I'm hoping there will be some, some tangible change. And certainly, speaking more from a, a Vibes'perspektive, I think in Silicon Valley, it has become. I don't wanna, me, maybe not cool, but, but at least accepted to either be in-governed or be doing business with the government. There's this kind of American dünamism practice that Andreessen Horvitz, championed, and no, no, there's lots of folks who are kind of involved in this space, but, you know, government contracting is, is, is seen as a huge opportunity. So I think, you know, Doge, Andreessen, and, and many of these guys in kind of Silicon Valley, embracing. Government and, or the Trump administratsioon, depending on your perspective and trying to reform it, has opened up an avenue for Silicon Valley to get more involved in a way that I don't really remember. Except for, you know, maybe president Obama's first term, when at the time there was also a lot of excitement from the Silicon Valley community to do, you know, some of these things like. USDS and, and 18F and some of these, some of these programs to also make government more efficient, but what, who are a little bit more. Slower going and methodical, et see.
Ja, actually, it, it actually launch in Europe, before it came out in, in the US, so it's only just started shipping in, in the US. So. The, the publishing industry is archaic and idiosyncratic, what can, what can you do? I, I'd say the, the, the main, the main feedback, frankly, is. Well, it's, it's cool, we like it, but, you know, can America really do this, right, can, can we, can we really, you know, take the lessons from, from Estonia, you know, given it's 1.3 miljon and, you know, and I, I tried to, I tried to. Kind of counter this in the book and I think there's still more work to be done there, or like. Jaa, of course Estonia is in a very different cultural kontekst, historical kontekst and, I mean just scale, but there are certainly lessons that can be, you know, that can be learned from both sides, I mean, maybe they are the more general side of the, you know, changing incentive struktures and, you know, and how you, how you think about innovation within the government and, you know, mindset and kind of need more fuzi kvalites, or. You know, maybe they are just like the technical infrastrukture side, which, which we can, you know, draw lessons from in different places as well, so. I, I certainly think there are applicable lessons and I've been trying to reframe it a little bit as like, well, I mean, you're saying, you know, America can't do this because we're250 times larger, whatever it is. Um, is not that exactly the reason why we can do this, like we're the wealthiest country in the world, who have develop all these amazing things and have Silicon Valley and you're saying that we can't digitise government, that's crazy.
it. Yes, ja, just take it and drop it and say, everybody, everybody by fifty copy's, ja. No, I, I, I think the, the primary audience for, for me to start with, was definetely policy makers and kind of the civic tehnoloogist, so. No, folks, who are in USDS or, you know, GSA and kind of interested in, in government modernisation, and. And where this would be most applicable, I mean, this is the US context, but I'm hoping that, you know, for, for me, Estonia was also an interesting case to study, because obviously, you know, it's a, a very Western demokraasi, with strong, you know, media rulovloa, et cetera. So, so I thought it would be, you know, more applicable to, you know, other Western nations than, than say, studying, I don't know, China or something, which. You know, they have their own digital government, but a very different, a very different style, that I don't think is as applicable to the United States, so. That's the, that's the primary audience. And then I'd say the secondary audience is just, you know, generalfolks. Interested in Estonia and kind of tech, tech in general, because I think there are some fun stories about building the tech eco-system in Skype and these sorts of things kind of sprinkled, sprinkled throughout the book and. Ja, I think in Silicon Valley, there's, there's some recognition of Estonia, but generally it's, it's quite, it's quite high level, it's, oh jaa, it's, I, I think I've heard about, et, et, et, et, et, et, et they're, they're quite good, et, et they're quite good at digital or something, et, et, et that's generally the, the response I get to people, when I talk about Estonians, so. This is hopefully also like a, a little bit more education, so people, people can learn, you know, a little bit more in depth about the country.
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