Estonian Prime Minister Juri Ratas has signed agreements of good will with the African Union and Mauritius for the development of e-governance.
The agreement with the African Union more broadly concerns e-governance cooperation, whereas the agreement with Mauritius focuses more specifically on the creation of a regional e-governance training module. The signing of both agreements took place on the sidelines of European Union -- African Union summit, spokespeople for the Estonian government said.
Estonia is built on secure state e-systems, so the world was watching when it hit a huge ID-card problem.
For the past two and a half months, Estonia has been facing the biggest security crisis since a wave of cyberattacks hit its banks and critical national infrastructure in 2007.
At the heart of the current debacle is the latest version of its national ID card, which has been a mandatory identification document for citizens of Estonia since 2002 and serves as a cornerstone of Estonia's e-state.
Read more: Estonia's ID card crisis: How e-state's poster child got into and out of trouble
Estonia has ordered the shutdown of its vaunted online government service because of the “real threat” of e-identity theft for hundreds of thousands of citizens.
Hundreds of thousands of Estonians will be locked out of the country’s digital services from midnight on Friday due to a security issue.
Read more: Fears of E-Identity Theft Cause Estonia to Suspend Online ID Service
The Estonian government has backed a plan of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications to stage a public competition for building the last mile of the nationwide high-speed internet network, which will provide high-speed internet to low population density areas that the private sector will not invest in on its own.
The terms and conditions of the competition will be determined by Minister of Entrepreneurship and IT Urve Palo in collaboration with the Competition Authority and the Technical Regulatory Authority, spokespeople for the government said on Thursday.
Read more: Estonian government in favor of holding public competition for internet last mile
Estonia is making efforts to start the process that could eventually lead to the point where no country can impose restrictive measures to the free flow of data across the European Union member states’ borders – it is called the fifth freedom of the EU, the free movement of data between the members of the bloc.
“Today, data has become the coal and steel of the digital society,” the Estonian prime minister, Jüri Ratas, said in July at the Digital Single Market Conference (DSM) in Tallinn. One key focus of Estonia’s presidency of the Council of the European Union has been the concept of the free movement of data. The DSM conference gave a concrete introduction of the idea, with politicians, researchers, industry leaders and digital pioneers carefully laying out the benefits and importance of the freedom of cross-border data exchange.
Read more: Estonia – making the case for the free movement of data