As my stay in Tartu goes to an end I finally wanted to try to become an #eresident of #Estonia to stay connected to the country.

Well, here is the process and how it turned out eventually…

… why did I want to try? Besides hearing and experiencing some examples of digital government in academia, life didnt seem much different up here. Most interestingly: I had to wait 2 h in a room for someone to copy my personal information previously written on paper to get my personal ID (even short term students need this). So I thought maybe I have to take another step to unlock the full potential.

… to get the true experience I started my journey at https://www.e-resident.gov.ee/ and didnt read up on the topic before. Besides the promise that it will take me 30 min and that #Estonia has the world record in fastest company incorporation (15 min) - the whole process took me 1h 39min 32s (wasnt hunting any world record).

… mainly I was explaining what connects me to the country and motivates me to get the #eresidency . Scoring points in the Estonian People’s basketball league - writing a report about yet to come mobile voting - taking a #kaggle challenge on open museum data and striving for implementation.

… finally we came to the spicy questions about social media, payment providers and crypto (images below) that were kind of difficult to answer as “No, I dont use such thing” would be an obvious lie. But still this felt too personal to tell to a state and contradictory to the idea of virtual currencies. [#Estonia follow me @tillwenke ;)]

… the 20€ for pick-up at the embassy in Berlin (only one in Germany) were okay for me.

… at the end there were some boxes to check - one mentioning a “state fee” that couldnt be refunded. Reading up on this the actual costs are 100€ (https://www.politsei.ee/en/instructions/e-resident-s-digital-id/how-much-and-how-to-pay). What a surprise at the end of my journey - this just felt like online shopping with unexpected shipping costs - currently that is not worth the money for me and I wonder if this excludes the people who might make most use of #eresidency (indeed there was a special program for Ukrainian citizens) and if this is a good state income stream with +100k #eresidents - Good Bye Estonia!

Final thought: the fee might not hurt that much as an entrepreneur who want to kick-start their company here. But with 1 to 2 months time to finally receive your #eresidency I imagine you might get it done in your own country as well. Nevertheless access to the European business environment can be of value for many founders around the globe.