Western Europe needs to learn to get small
A fast-emerging class of tech-first nations have left the bureaucratic Western European nations looking prehistoric.
Take Estonia, which is utilising a fully functional digital ID scheme across healthcare and voting. Bhutan has its very own national crypto payment system. And last month, El Salvador released an AI-powered healthcare app alongside Google that provides rapid and free access to health consultations and medication, a revolutionary piece of technology improving lives in real time.
The West’s governments in Europe can no longer lie dormant. They must watch and learn from the blueprint these tech-forward nations are laying out.
Yes, smaller nations such as El Salvador are more agile, making it easier for them to experiment with and pioneer new tech-driven approaches to government. Larger, old-guard nations with more deeply entrenched legacy systems are at a disadvantage. But this only makes the case for innovation more critical.
The West must both emulate the move-fast-and-fix-things attitude of these tech pioneers to develop their own innovations, and follow their technical recipes where they’ve already succeeded.
In doing so, Western Europe can finally modernise, slash costs, and move out of the way to unleash the power of technology for its populaces.
First, Western countries need to learn how to innovate.
Take El Salvador, which is moving quickly, experimenting boldly, and embracing failure as a necessary risk. It operates more like a startup than a bureaucracy, jumping hurdles, sandboxing new ideas, and striking deals with tech leaders such as Musk’s xAI and Nvidia.
It has taken risks in sensitive, and thus critically important, areas of government, from schooling, by introducing AI in over 5,000 schools, to healthcare. It’s even developed its own national AI lab and implemented an AI law to extend legal protections to open-source models and offer a zero percent tax rate on AI innovation.
It's not all been easy, but the intention is right, and when it is successful, it pays off in a big way.
Second, Western Europe must swallow a humility pill and start copying the successful digitisation innovations coming out of smaller, tech-first nations. They can no longer pretend to have all the answers. Nor can they find them quickly enough.
The UK, France, and their neighbours, all of which are crippled by public healthcare costs while simultaneously providing much-decried health services, should be queuing up to ask for the recipe to El Salvador’s healthcare platform.
They should be consulting Google, which partnered on the project, and licensing the tech. They should be inviting delegates from El Salvador to learn from their expertise. Failing this, they should be putting together an expert engineering unit to replicate it. They can even pretend it's their own innovation.
But they’ve wilfully ignored El Salvador’s progress. Why? Because they’re cowed by risk. They’re terrified of handing over the keys to someone who might do it better.
Western Europe was once a global leader in technological innovation. Today, its nations are weighed down by outdated, heavy-handed bureaucracy. By creaking legacy systems they think they can’t live without. And an ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ attitude. But it is broken. And we need to break it more to fix it.
The potential is there. When it comes to defence tech, Western Europe has shown a surprising aptitude and willingness to do this. It’s evolving its procurement, unleashing the private sector, and leaning on nimble startups. It has even admitted its own shortcomings, leaning on the tech expertise of Eastern European nations.
Now it must replicate this hunger for innovation within the government. If it does, it will slash costs, govern better, unleash the private sector – and, most importantly, improve lives. To do so, it needs to wake up, move fast, and innovate.
Michael Marcotte is the Co-Founder of the US National Cybersecurity Centre (NCC) and previously served as Chair of its Rapid Response Centre. He is also the Founder, Chairman, and CEO of artius.iD.
