For the first time, the European Space Agency has used the Estonian digital signature solution to sign a memorandum – and naturally, the document was between the ESA and Estonia.
Jan Woerner, the director general of the space agency, and Urve Palo, the Estonian minister of entrepreneurship and information technology, signed the Memorandum of Understanding on Information and Communications Technology collaboration on 13 June. According to the space agency, it was the first digital signature signed at the ESA.
Read more: Estonian digital signature used to sign a memorandum with the European Space Agency
With the help of Estonia, the tiny island nation of Jamaica is looking to establish its region’s first e-government system.
The Jamaican prime minister, Andrew Holness, said in a statement that his administration was committed to establishing the first fully digitised government system in the region.
Read more: Estonia to help Jamaica establish its region’s first e-government system
On Tueday morning, President Kersti Kaljulaid delivered the opening remarks at the two-day Tallinn e-Governance Conference 2017, which has brought together participants from 115 countries around the world.
"A quarter of a century ago, when Estonia restored its independent statehood, we were a poor country," Kaljulaid said in her opening remarks as published by the Office of the President. "The crucial question stood in front of us — how to overcome the legacy left to us by the Soviet occupation? Our response was — we need to build up a modern, efficient and democratic state. Radical reforms were carried out in all walks of life. The forward-looking idea was to harness the innovative potential of information and communication technology (ICT). Neither we nor anyone else knew 20 years ago how important the internet and ICT would become and what role it would play in the organization of state and society.
Read more: EE: Kaljulaid: E-governance now a vital commodity in global information society
Estonia is clearly punching above its weight when it comes to e-services, African ICT leaders attending the Tallinn e-Governance Conference 2017 told daily Postimees.
One of the conference's highest-ranking guests was African Union Commissioner for Infrastructure and Energy Dr. Amani Abou-Zeid, effectively the counterpart of European Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society Andrus Ansip, Postimees wrote.
A tiny Baltic country tries to automate everything smartly.
This former Soviet republic thinks of itself as a country in the cloud and its politicians think of its government as a service.
The newly independent Estonia maximized its legacy as the home of the Soviet Institute of Cybernetics, betting big on high tech and startups to counter a flatlining 1990s economy. By the turn of the century, all Estonian schools were online, and today students as young as 5 learn coding skills through a course called “Programming Tiger.” That knowledge base is complemented by a mandatory electronic ID card system that gave digital public services the benefit of scale from the beginning, said Gunnar Njålsson, a research expert in public technology management.
Read more: Test driving the ultimate connected society: (E-)stonia