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Our e-Estonia Briefing Centre – the must-visit destination for anyone interested in e-governance and Estonian IT solutions, has been hosting over 10000 high-level decision-makers every year. But with COVID-19 and the current travel restrictions, we have decided to close our centre for the safety of our guests and staff.
We are nonetheless determined to keep going online and deliver to you the valuable insights on what it takes to build, maintain and secure a digital society. As the upcoming months unfold, we encourage you to stay connected via our website and social media as we do just that and share the lessons learned from coping with the crisis. We will be covering how our digital systems continue to function under this new form of pressure, what we have learned and are learning on the go, and how our public and private sectors are trying to contribute to the recovery process at home and abroad.
As the world is recalibrating, so are we at the e-Estonia Briefing Centre. In fact, we have come to see this as a time to build our centre’s next generation of e-services, available from anywhere in the world, in the best traditions of the Estonian digital state of mind. So as a start, our doors remain open online, here’s how:
e-Briefings
We are looking forward to the day we can host you again in person! But until then, we are continuing our briefings in virtual space. Book your online visit through our website to hear the story of e-Estonia, meet our Estonian companies and request a demo of the solutions that saved the day during this crisis. Are questions allowed? Absolutely! You can engage just like you would in our briefing rooms and our speakers are happy to answer any questions you may have.
We have also created a series of online materials for you to explore to get an introduction to the digital society. Check out our video presentations either on our website or on our youtube channel or enter our digital society through VR Estonia to get started.
e-Talks Live
Our monthly interview series might be on a temporary pause in its previous shape and form, but we are not stopping our e-Talks! Join us on our weekly webinars, hosted 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. You can catch up with the most popular topics discussed so far:
Digital society in quarantine:
Our speaker-analyst at the Briefing Centre, Florian Marcus and Indrek Õnnik, an adviser at the Ministry of Communications and Economic Affairs, kicked off our live series by discussing how our digital society continues to function under these unprecedented conditions. Find out how the utility of Estonia’s digital services increases even more, when we can’t leave our homes, how digitalisation and privacy go hand in hand when done right and how Estonia’s next-generation seamless services aim to make our lives easier, even when hit by a global crisis.
e-Health during a global pandemic:
In this session, Florian caught up with Priit Tohver, an adviser for e-services development at the Ministry of Social Affairs, to dive into Estonia’s e-Health system. The discussion touches upon e-prescriptions, the patient portal, data protection and privacy and how Estonia’s system has the potential to ease the current burden on doctors, the healthcare system and the state as a whole. Furthermore, you can find out how these circumstances have pushed rapid innovation in the state system and how do we go forward from here.
Fresh startups to tackle the crisis:
Last week, our expert speaker Anett Numa had a discussion with Michaela Snopkova, a colleague from Work in Estonia and also the co-founder of a brand new start-up – Suve. Born out of the Estonian Hack the Crisis hackathon, Suve is an automated chatbot, designed to facilitate the interactions between the state and citizen. How did it all come together, and what is Suve all about? How is the chatbot solution helping the frontline workers? And how did the crisis add urgency to a project that had been in the works for 2 years? Find out from the recording.
Catch up with the live webinars from April-May!
Looking to the future
This crisis has indeed pushed us into a phase of rapid innovation to tackle the massive problems we are facing. Keep yourself in the loop with the developments coming out of this space via our new factsheet that summarises the crisis response solutions created by Estonian companies, either on their own or in collaboration with the government. We will be updating the list as more projects come to life.
If you’d like to learn more about these solutions or are interested in implementing any of them in your community or country, don’t hesitate to let our Business Engagement team know at . We are eager to hear all about your needs and create a custom online briefings agenda just for your organisation or company interests.
