E-Residency: a business platform for smart rural development

Gunnar Prause, Ivan Boevsky

Abstract: E-government is a popular topic on the political agenda and many countries are working on the development and improvement of e-services. But e-government is more than the provision of public services electronically – it also means the implementation of consequent process-oriented procedures supporting management and organisational structures within public and private institutions. Until now the customers’ needs, especially the requirements of entrepreneurs and small and medium-sized enterprises (SME) in the context of international supply chains have not been in the focus of most e-governmental service developments. Likewise the rural areas are enjoying a new attention due to “smart” concepts which were usually reserved for an urban or industrial context. All smart approaches for rural areas are based on digitalization, i.e. a better internet access, an enhanced use of digital technologies and the development of new business models can help to bridge the distance to cities, to overcome rural shortcomings and to provide new revenue and value-producing opportunities. Consequently, new IT-based business platforms are required to offer new and tailor-made e-services for the needs in the countryside and to facilitate a smart rural development. A first big step towards the implementation of business platform for smart rural development is embodied by the Estonian development of “e-Residency”, which might be an appropriate e-business approach for managing smart processes in the countryside and which takes into account the perspective of internationally operating entrepreneurs and SME’s. The paper addresses the research question of how the e-residency concept might facilitate smart rural development and how rural entrepreneurs and SMEs may benefit more from new business models by using the e-Residency platform of Estonia.

Keywords: digitalization; e-Residency; smart rural areas; smart specialization

Date published: 2017-10-09