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Until there's a solar flare and instead it's just cost them 1640 years. Or a catastrophic computer virus. Or any number of black swan disaster scenarios. I'm a

by rcarr 4y ago

Until there's a solar flare and instead it's just cost them 1640 years. Or a catastrophic computer virus. Or any number of black swan disaster scenarios. I'm a tech guy and I do think that this is good news. I just hope that the people in charge of designing these systems have also thought about what happens if these systems catastrophically fail. And that measuring things like '820 years saved' are only really claims you can make after waiting a long period of time to ensure it's proven itself stable.

scottLobster 4y ago
Black swan events affect non-digital information as well. How many paper records have been lost to fire, floods and simple decay over the millennia? At least with digital records there's the chance that they're backed up offsite somewhere
- rcarr 4y ago
  Personally I think the ideal system would include both. Maybe a digital system that is periodically (say once a year) transferred to tape and stored in a secure facility like the Svalbard Seed Vault.
  - culturestate 4y ago
    > Maybe a digital system that is periodically (say once a year) transferred to tape and stored in a secure facility This has been standard procedure (not at Svalbard, obviously, but at one or more secure offsite facilities) for every critical data system I’ve ever personally encountered in regulated industry, though rotations are usually weekly/monthly rather than yearly.
    - kneebonian 4y ago
      > This has been standard procedure Are they testing the backups and restoring from them regularly, because if they aren't there isn't any backup happening.
      - Dylan16807 4y ago
        For this kind of system, probably very yes. But I don't blame you for asking, when there are stories of irreplaceable nuclear test data being stuffed on some RAIDs and then nobody replacing the disk failures for years and years...
    - rcarr 4y ago
      This is good to know. I've never had the privilege of working on such a system so it is nice to know that this kind of thing is actually happening. Especially when government preparation for any potential pandemic seemed to be piss poor right across the board.
  - germanier 4y ago
    After recognizing that risk, Estonia famously signed an international treaty with Luxemburg "in the spirit of the Vienna Convention" to host an offsite backup (and plans to extend such initiatives). https://www.riigiteataja.ee/aktilisa/2280/3201/8002/Lux_Info_Agreement.pdf https://www.riigiteataja.ee/aktilisa/2280/3201/8002/Lux_Info...
tapland 4y ago
Isn't it all still stored digitally though? Paper tax forms that have to be sent in are still processed to be read and stored digitally, but it would be much easier to not have to send the paper forms. The solar storm will strike individual systems that aren't connected as well.
giantg2 4y ago
My thought is that adversarial state actors are the biggest threat. Didn't Russia interfere with some of their services at one point?
- rcarr 4y ago
  Yes, considering they're on the doorstep of Russia and Belarus this is a fairly likely scenario. If their power utilities were targeted the way Ukraine's have been how many of these systems are still going to be able to run? That said if you've imposed martial law and men aren't allowed to leave the country because they've got to stay and fight then at least demand for your online passport service will have dropped by at least 50%
  - Avamander 4y ago
    If things get targeted with physical attacks like that, you won't be getting a passport internet or no internet, in impacted areas. It will be the least of your concerns.
    - rcarr 4y ago
      The last sentence was a bit of dark humour mate, I probably should have put a sarcasm tag on it. Probably should have said 'on the plus side' which is a bit more of a common way to start those kinds of jokes
ElKrist 4y ago
Any modern society is relying on digital supports for most of its administration. Estonia is just proposing more "frontends" to its citizens. Not all of them decide to use it btw (article mentions 46.9% of people use online voting) So if we're talking about "black swan disaster scenarios" or "catastrophic computer virus", I don't see any difference between Estonia and other countries.
kneebonian 4y ago
This highlights one of the things I've recognized, for a long time the digital existed beside the paper, the computer often had problems and people knew things would have problems so they would always have a manual paper backup. "The HR computer is on the fritz and can get paychecks out, well wheel out the file folders, and get everyone in HR some ballpoint pens because they're here until midnight", but nowadays digital first really means digital only, and we see the consequences of that when people are no longer able to do rational or reasonable things because the computer won't allow it. "Sorry I know this document has to have your legal name, but unfortunately the system can't handle a character with an accent have you thought about changing your name instead?" I mean I am starting to see more and more places, that don't have a til or register, just a tablet and an app which sure saves you some overhead, but if a backhoe decides to dig through the fiber line, congratulations your shop just got shut down until it works agian. Now people will say "bad things could happen in the old days to!" That is true, but the difference was if bad things happened you generally had some measure of control and ability to effect change and at least find some temporary stop gap, the problem is now we have lost all autonomy because the shift to digital has also meant loss of control and locality. Back in the day if the power went out you could open up a receipt book and a ledger and keep taking payments until it came back on, now you can sit and twiddle your thumbs. My point is if you are "digital first" that means you are "digital only" and you sure as hell need to figure out a backup quick because it turns out shooting magic beams of light, across continents, has many more failure cases than a locked file folder.
- culturestate 4y ago
  > if a backhoe decides to dig through the fiber line, congratulations your shop just got shut down until it works agian. … Back in the day if the power went out you could open up a receipt book and a ledger and keep taking payments until it came back on, now you can sit and twiddle your thumbs. This is nothing a good UPS and a standby 5G modem couldn’t handle. Digital systems can be made reliable and redundant, but most people don’t want to go through the effort (or expense) to make it happen.
chefandy 4y ago
So much government data is temporal. Many already have strict archiving guidelines that mandate destroying certainly classes of documents after some number of years... many are single-digit. Nobody needs a copy of which city councilman voted to approve new speed bumps on Main St. 20 years ago, or your first 2 rejected applications for permits to remodel your bathroom. Most archivists are pretty aware of the problems with digital storage and know how to mitigate it.
- pasttense01 4y ago
  There 87,576 governments in the U.S. [federal, state, county, city, township, school district, special purpose district] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_government_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_government_in_the_United... Only a very small percent have an archivist.
  - chefandy 4y ago
    Many have policies informed by them. Even the town hall in the little 3k population town I grew up in had pretty standard data retention/destruction processes.
wiseowise 4y ago
Oh yeah, because those problems wouldn’t affect low tech platforms at all.

by rcarr 4y ago

scottLobster 4y ago

Black swan events affect non-digital information as well. How many paper records have been lost to fire, floods and simple decay over the millennia? At least with digital records there's the chance that they're backed up offsite somewhere

rcarr 4y ago
Personally I think the ideal system would include both. Maybe a digital system that is periodically (say once a year) transferred to tape and stored in a secure facility like the Svalbard Seed Vault.
- culturestate 4y ago
  > Maybe a digital system that is periodically (say once a year) transferred to tape and stored in a secure facility This has been standard procedure (not at Svalbard, obviously, but at one or more secure offsite facilities) for every critical data system I’ve ever personally encountered in regulated industry, though rotations are usually weekly/monthly rather than yearly.
  - kneebonian 4y ago
    > This has been standard procedure Are they testing the backups and restoring from them regularly, because if they aren't there isn't any backup happening.
    - Dylan16807 4y ago
      For this kind of system, probably very yes. But I don't blame you for asking, when there are stories of irreplaceable nuclear test data being stuffed on some RAIDs and then nobody replacing the disk failures for years and years...
  - rcarr 4y ago
    This is good to know. I've never had the privilege of working on such a system so it is nice to know that this kind of thing is actually happening. Especially when government preparation for any potential pandemic seemed to be piss poor right across the board.
- germanier 4y ago
  After recognizing that risk, Estonia famously signed an international treaty with Luxemburg "in the spirit of the Vienna Convention" to host an offsite backup (and plans to extend such initiatives). https://www.riigiteataja.ee/aktilisa/2280/3201/8002/Lux_Info_Agreement.pdf https://www.riigiteataja.ee/aktilisa/2280/3201/8002/Lux_Info...

tapland 4y ago

Isn't it all still stored digitally though? Paper tax forms that have to be sent in are still processed to be read and stored digitally, but it would be much easier to not have to send the paper forms. The solar storm will strike individual systems that aren't connected as well.

giantg2 4y ago

My thought is that adversarial state actors are the biggest threat. Didn't Russia interfere with some of their services at one point?

rcarr 4y ago
Yes, considering they're on the doorstep of Russia and Belarus this is a fairly likely scenario. If their power utilities were targeted the way Ukraine's have been how many of these systems are still going to be able to run? That said if you've imposed martial law and men aren't allowed to leave the country because they've got to stay and fight then at least demand for your online passport service will have dropped by at least 50%
- Avamander 4y ago
  If things get targeted with physical attacks like that, you won't be getting a passport internet or no internet, in impacted areas. It will be the least of your concerns.
  - rcarr 4y ago
    The last sentence was a bit of dark humour mate, I probably should have put a sarcasm tag on it. Probably should have said 'on the plus side' which is a bit more of a common way to start those kinds of jokes

ElKrist 4y ago

Any modern society is relying on digital supports for most of its administration. Estonia is just proposing more "frontends" to its citizens. Not all of them decide to use it btw (article mentions 46.9% of people use online voting) So if we're talking about "black swan disaster scenarios" or "catastrophic computer virus", I don't see any difference between Estonia and other countries.

kneebonian 4y ago

This highlights one of the things I've recognized, for a long time the digital existed beside the paper, the computer often had problems and people knew things would have problems so they would always have a manual paper backup. "The HR computer is on the fritz and can get paychecks out, well wheel out the file folders, and get everyone in HR some ballpoint pens because they're here until midnight", but nowadays digital first really means digital only, and we see the consequences of that when people are no longer able to do rational or reasonable things because the computer won't allow it. "Sorry I know this document has to have your legal name, but unfortunately the system can't handle a character with an accent have you thought about changing your name instead?" I mean I am starting to see more and more places, that don't have a til or register, just a tablet and an app which sure saves you some overhead, but if a backhoe decides to dig through the fiber line, congratulations your shop just got shut down until it works agian. Now people will say "bad things could happen in the old days to!" That is true, but the difference was if bad things happened you generally had some measure of control and ability to effect change and at least find some temporary stop gap, the problem is now we have lost all autonomy because the shift to digital has also meant loss of control and locality. Back in the day if the power went out you could open up a receipt book and a ledger and keep taking payments until it came back on, now you can sit and twiddle your thumbs. My point is if you are "digital first" that means you are "digital only" and you sure as hell need to figure out a backup quick because it turns out shooting magic beams of light, across continents, has many more failure cases than a locked file folder.

culturestate 4y ago
> if a backhoe decides to dig through the fiber line, congratulations your shop just got shut down until it works agian. … Back in the day if the power went out you could open up a receipt book and a ledger and keep taking payments until it came back on, now you can sit and twiddle your thumbs. This is nothing a good UPS and a standby 5G modem couldn’t handle. Digital systems can be made reliable and redundant, but most people don’t want to go through the effort (or expense) to make it happen.

chefandy 4y ago

So much government data is temporal. Many already have strict archiving guidelines that mandate destroying certainly classes of documents after some number of years... many are single-digit. Nobody needs a copy of which city councilman voted to approve new speed bumps on Main St. 20 years ago, or your first 2 rejected applications for permits to remodel your bathroom. Most archivists are pretty aware of the problems with digital storage and know how to mitigate it.

pasttense01 4y ago
There 87,576 governments in the U.S. [federal, state, county, city, township, school district, special purpose district] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_government_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_government_in_the_United... Only a very small percent have an archivist.
- chefandy 4y ago
  Many have policies informed by them. Even the town hall in the little 3k population town I grew up in had pretty standard data retention/destruction processes.

wiseowise 4y ago

Oh yeah, because those problems wouldn’t affect low tech platforms at all.