Estonia and Japan are to strengthen cooperation on cybersecurity and digital identification, the prime ministers of the two countries agreed last week in Tokyo.
During his visit to Japan by the
Estonian prime minister, Taavi Rõivas, his Japanese colleague, Shinzo
Abe, commended Estonia on its successes in the fields of information
technology and cybersecurity.
“There’s much we can learn from Estonia,
which holds IT as the central pillar of nation-building, thereby
promoting better efficiency in administration and people’s lives,” Abe
said, according to the Kyodo news agency.
Japan has recently introduced a national
identification system, called “My Number”, that is sometimes compared
with Estonia’s e-government and ID-card system. Under the My Number
system, all Japanese citizens have been assigned a unique 12-digit
number that combines their interaction with the government – including
their income, taxes, social security, benefits etc.
But unlike in Estonia, where the ID-card
system has strongly embedded in people’s lives, the public opinion in
Japan on the My Number system has been split. The critics of the system
cite data breaches that have compromised both the public and private
sectors, including a leak at the Japan Pension Service in May 2015.
In addition to cybersecurity
cooperation, Abe and Rõivas also talked about an economic partnership
agreement that is being negotiated between Japan and the European Union.
According to the Kyodo news agency, Rõivas called for the signing of
the pact before the end of the year.
The prime ministers also discussed speeding up negotiations for a bilateral treaty aimed at boosting business cooperation.
Taavi Rõivas is on a six-day visit to Japan through Sunday.