Estonia shares its e-state success with the world
Estonia has been building its digital society and e-government for over 20 years. Voting on the internet, declaring taxes in 2 minutes, registering your car online or buying prescriptions with ID card are just a few examples of what Estonians can do online. The Estonian dream is to have as little government as possible but as much as is necessary. The Covid pandemic, recurring lockdowns and the ongoing war in Ukraine accelerated the pace of public sector digitalisation and the need for a secure, resilient digital state. Estonia has been open to sharing its experience, lessons learned, and know-how with governments and companies globally, and e-Estonia Briefing Centre has played a crucial role in it.
Over the 14 years, e-Estonia Briefing Centre has hosted over 5700 delegations with 83 000 people from over 130 countries worldwide. Public and private sector decision-makers and academia come to Estonia for inspiration, guidance and valuable contacts to build their digital transformation journeys. The centre was explicitly designed to experience everything e-Estonia offers. At the e-Estonia Briefing Centre, we present visitors with the e-Estonia concept, lessons learned and challenges, and the future of our digital state. In addition, we frequently assist and consult other countries with digitalisation initiatives and match them with credible, leading IT partners to empower their efforts and boost innovation and international cooperation.
A good indicator between the expectations of the delegations and the values offered by the centre are the success stories of business programs, which we organised over 100 last year. The idea is to match international delegations with Estonian private and public sector experts and companies who have built our digital solutions. Following recent years' success, the interest was towards e-government (e-government strategy, data exchange, AI strategy, cyber security etc.) and smart mobility.
One of the remarkable recent examples of Estonian ICT services export comes from the other side of the world – Mexico. Last year Roksnet, a Tallinn-headquartered company devoted to building digital ecosystems, partnered with Querétaro, a federal state in central Mexico with a population of 2.4 million, to explore embedding Estonia's X-Road protocol into its digital agenda. According to Carlos Vargas, representatives from Querétaro, the Briefing Centre played a pivotal role in putting them in touch with Roksnet. "With work from both sides, we have managed to integrate our expertise with their plans," he said.
But Estonian ICT companies are not only exporting and sharing their public sector digitalisation capacities – Helmes, the company behind many Estonian e-solutions, recently announced a partnership with Airbus and launched a custom-made IT solution that helps Airbus manage the production process of Aircraft. They also provide its aircraft-manufacturing subsidiary with an IT system that makes one stage of its production process significantly more effective.
If you need help figuring out where to start with your digitalisation journey, turn to e-Estonia Briefing Centre for consultation, briefing or customised programmes with public and private sector digitalisation experts. Please take a look at our services and get in touch.