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As is the case with organisations all over the world, the e-Estonia Briefing Centre has not been open to the public since the outbreak of coronavirus in Estonia this past March. So in order to deliver our message of how to create and maintain a secure digital society, we’ve gone fully digital!
The e-Estonia Live webinar series is hosted weekly on our e-Estonia Facebook page, where we connect with Estonian state experts and company representatives to discuss current issues and the developments within e-Estonia. For those who may have missed the webinars when they were live, we’ll summarise the main points and provide you with the rebroadcasts in this article. Catch up on what you missed!
Free education solutions in times of crisis
In this session, Digital Transformation Advisor, Florian Marcus got a lesson in digital education. Sitting down with Tanel Keres, CEO of eKool – a school management system for parents, students, teachers and local governments, and Antti Rammo, CEO of Star Cloud, which provides digital learning materials from different educational publishers. The three of them discussed one of the biggest challenges of the Covid-19 crisis – how to educate children when schools are closed and when parents already have enough on their plates. The conversation touched upon Estonia’s own e-Education system, which since 2015 had had plans to go digital by 2020 (great timing!). As well as speculating on what kind of impact the crisis will have on digitalisation in the education field in the long run.
Where did we come from, where do we go?
In this webinar, Florian held a dialogue with Linnar Viik, Co-Founder of the e-Governance Academy, who joined the discussion from a peaceful forest in South Estonia. As Mr. Viik was one of the minds behind e-Estonia, the conversation centered on the first “digital baby steps” of the digitisation process: looking at what the defining moments were, and comparing e-governance today to what the future holds, and the organic evolution of the digital state. An important takeaway from the conversation was that when implementing digital solutions, countries cannot simply copy-paste Estonia’s model, although it is a great example. Countries must forge their own digital paths.
Reinventing your business during Covid-19
This week’s webinar had Florian Marcus, sitting down with e-Estonia’s Managing Director, Anna Piperal and Janno Siimar, partner at the strategic service design agency, Velvet. The trio looked at how businesses and organisations should go about redesigning services and adapting to changing circumstances. As well as commenting on some common pitfalls companies face when trying to redesign services on their own. Anna shares how we may come to see the current set of challenges posed by the crisis as an opportunity for positive change. With Janno adding, there is no “going back to normal.” Rather, we should be “moving forward to normal.” However, doing so will require that we re-frame our ideas to affect the way we plan for the future.
Matchmaking for e-solutions around the world
Here at the Briefing Centre, we connect people all over the world to help facilitate successful B2B and B2G partnerships. Which is why we invited Allan Dobrõš, Business Engagement manager at the Briefing Centre, and Risto Hansen, Director of Business Development and e-Government Solutions at Guardtime, to this week’s webinar. We hear first-hand about these experiences as Risto shares some examples of the successful partnerships formed through the collaboration with the e-Estonia Briefing Centre. And because Guardtime is a cyber security provider which delivers blockchain-based systems and integrity solutions to governments and enterprises, the topics of security, data exchange and data protection were also touched upon.
From electronic identity to a digital world
In the most recent session, Florian sat down with Taavi Kotka, the former CIO of the Government of Estonia, the Founder of Proud Engineers and one of the minds behind Estonia’s e-Residency. Based on his experiences in helping implement digital solutions around the world, we touch upon the hindering, as well as supporting factors of digitalisation in various contexts. As well as hearing why privacy concerns are never actually an obstacle for digitalisation, what future electronic identity will look like, and what we could be learning in the current crisis.
And stay tuned for our upcoming e-Talks. This week’s live webinar on Wednesday May, 20th will focus on cybersecurity. Anett Numa will be joined by 2 experts in the field, Piret Urb, the Head of International Relations at the Information System Authority, and Jaak Tarien, Director of The NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence. Is Estonia able to help the world with its innovative, research-oriented, and globally acknowledged competence in cybersecurity? Tune in to find out!
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Today, e-governance and e-services have become a necessity in every country. e-Estonia Briefing Centre – the gateway to Estonian expertise in e-governance, invites you to connect with the Estonian IT companies directly responsible for the successful functioning of the e-state even during a pandemic. Get in touch with us to set up your custom virtual programme with the best partners you could get:
