Government 2.0
Whilst roaming through the corridors of government buildings, one often encounters stacks of paper, old copy machines and rather depressed staff sorting through piles of reports, petitions, legal texts and other bureaucratic texts. The European Union is a well-known example of just how inefficient bureaucracy can get. Every month around 2,500 boxes are transported by five trucks between the EU’s parliaments permanent base in Brussels and its official home in Strasbourg. The estimated annual cost of moving the parliament between the two cities is about 285 million USD . Now, I will not go into the details of why this move is or is not necessary (if you are a EU citizen, you would probably then question the sanity of your representatives). I just want to point out that inefficiencies in governments are costing the taxpayer millions every year. Now, how do we solve this? Estonia, a country not larger than the Netherlands with about 1.3 million inhabitants, is renowned to have one of the ...