A new report from The Associated Press outlines Estonia's most recent advancements in its digital government.
Estonia allows its citizens to vote, obtains medical data and register business documents online.
Given security concerns and other complications, it remains unclear whether nations like the U.S. could implement similar systems.
In Estonia, which has been steadily digitizing its government for decades, the country's 1.3 million citizens can access virtually all public and private services online by using a digital ID card that enables them to do tasks such as banking or business operations, signing documents or obtaining a digital medical prescription.
The country's digital government also:
Has used blockchain technology in its national health, judicial, legislative, security and commercial code systems registries since 2012.
Became the first country to offer online voting in a national election in 2005.
Provides each citizen with online access to nearly all of their personal medical data.
In the spring, Estonia plans to automate the birth registration process, making it so parents simply receive an email when their child is born. These and other records are managed through a software called X-Road, a decentralized data exchange system that links separate public databases, and enables people to see when data has been accessed or changed.
"Outgoing data is digitally signed and encrypted, and all incoming data is authenticated and logged," the report reads.
"In an ideal world, in the case of an invisible government, when a new child is born neither of the parents would ever have to apply for anything: to get maternity leave, to get child support from the municipality, to get a kindergarten place, to put the name to the child," he said. "All of those different services would be delivered automatically."
This increased efficiency could affect the way people perceive their governments.
"People's expectations for government services are the same as they have of all other digital interactions in their daily lives," Steve Hurst, who heads Deloitte Consulting's Digital Government group in New York, told Nature. "If you don't meet those expectations, it affects people's perception of the quality of government."