Estonia is planning to start issuing digital vaccination certificates in April, an official from the social affairs ministry said on Wednesday.
“We are planning to have our certificates ready in April together with our partner Guardtime,” said Kalle Killar, undersecretary for e-health and innovation at the ministry.
Killar said the digital certificates would help people both for travelling and in their everyday life and would be both easier to verify and more secure than paper ones.
He added that a global vaccination certificate which the Estonian government is working on with the World Health Organization (WHO) would likely take years to develop.
Estonia, a tech-savvy Baltic state that has served as a testing ground for innovations, has one of the highest coronavirus infection rates in Europe.
Its prime minister, Kaja Kallas, is currently in quarantine after testing positive for the coronavirus.
The EU member of 1.3 million people also has one of the highest vaccination rates in Europe.
The European Union has announced plans for digital vaccination certificates before the summer to facilitate travel.
Not the mythical creatures with horns: In the financial world, unicorns are private startups with a value of more than one billion dollars.
Zego is the latest company to join the exclusive club. It’s disrupting the insurance market by using technology to cover drivers in the gig economy.
Remarkably, it’s the sixth unicorn to canter out of Estonia, following in the footsteps of tech trailblazers like Skype, TransferWise and Bolt.
“One plus one equals three”
Zego is based in London but the company’s Estonian co-founder and chief executive, Sten Saar, says his home nation is seeing incredible results with entrepreneurs.
“Estonia doesn’t have any natural resources like quite a few other countries have”, says Saar, “hence they need to stand out through other means.”
“I think Estonia with its tiny population has an incredibly hard working, determined, driven people, and in that case one plus one equals three,” he adds.
The country’s government says Estonia is now the world leader in unicorns per capita, with six out of a population of 1.3 million.
Fellow Estonian Taavet Hinrikus, the CEO of Wise (formerly TransferWise) is an investor in Zego.
Disrupting insurance
Zego launched in 2016, offering vehicle insurance to Deliveroo riders and Uber drivers.
Saar says the insurance industry has remained largely the same for hundreds of years and it’s time to better serve the changing needs of customers.
“We are offering policies all the way from one minute, to one year, whatever works best for the customer” says the Zego CEO.
“When the vehicle is moving, you pay for insurance and if it doesn’t move, you don’t pay. It’s as simple as that.”
Zego is now focusing on bigger businesses and entire fleets of vehicles.
The company just raised another $150 million, valuing the company at $1.1 billion.
Saar says he wants to double the size of his team over the coming twelve months and to expand across Europe and beyond.
Tech companies are backing London despite Brexit/Reuters/John Sibley
Tech backing London
Many tech companies are continuing to back London despite the UK leaving the European Union.
The online food delivery company, Deliveroo, is expected to be valued at around $7 billion when it makes its stock market debut in London over the coming months.
Facebook also said last year it planned to create 1,000 new jobs in the UK.
Saar says the insurance industry originated in London and the city remains a great place to do business, both in terms of time zone and access to talent.
“We started the business in 2016 when the Brexit vote happened, so we’ve been designing the business making sure it doesn’t have any impact”, he says.
“To be honest, Brexit has been a bit of a speed bump for us, but that’s about it.”
As the EU gets ready to introduce a bloc-wide scheme, Estonia has been there, done that.
As the EU prepares to unveil plans for a digital ID in April, privacy campaigners will be ready to pounce on a scheme to equip hundreds of millions of Europeans with unique online identifiers.
Will it end online anonymity?
Will it expose our data to hackers?
Good thing Estonia is ready to answer their questions.
For the past 20 years, citizens in the ultra-wired Baltic country have been able to do everything from banking to starting a business to managing health appointments via their digital ID.
Issued at birth and good for life, Estonia’s digital ID is a unique digital document which allows people to securely log on to private and public websites, removing the need for extra checks on their identity.
Ninety-nine percent of people in the 1.3-million-strong country have one and, so far, the scheme has proved remarkably uncontroversial. “I would say that we definitely have less emphasis on privacy, less emphasis on fighting against the government,” said Estonian Social Democratic Party politician and internet freedom campaigner Siim Tuisk. Back when the digital ID system was first introduced, “we didn’t really care about privacy,” he added.
That may be because Estonians are accustomed to carrying out many of life’s activities digitally. A mantra in the country has it that the only things people can’t do online is get married or divorced, and buy property.
It also helps that the system’s designers have built in safeguards against exploitation, protecting it from an aggressive and cyber-savvy Russian neighbor: The system is decentralized, denying hackers a single point of attack, and individuals are able to see who their data has been accessed by as well as when and why — unless the request came from law enforcement, in which case they’ll be notified when the investigation is wrapped up.
The upside is convenience and, according to one study from McKinsey Global Institute, an economic boost: Countries that implement a digital ID scheme can boost their gross domestic product by 3 to 13 percent by 2030.
“Come on,” tweeted former Estonian president Toomas Hendrik Ilves, reacting to news that the Commission was mulling over its plan. “Estonia has had a secure Digital Identity in place for 20 years … Does the Commission want Europe to be able to compete or not?”
Estoni-ain’t
But that doesn’t mean Estonia’s scheme has been without hiccups — nor that it could be easily reproduced in other EU countries.
Most recently, the country’s Data Protection Inspectorate threatened a €100,000 penalty on three pharmacy chains that let individuals view another person’s e-prescriptions without their consent by misusing their digital IDs. The offence violated Europe’s privacy code, the GDPR.
In August 2020, an Estonian police officer and health care professional were revealed to have violated the same rules when they tried to access information from the e-health system about the officer’s future spouse without legal basis. The officer was fined €48 euros; the health care worker, €56. (It’s unclear if the wedding went ahead.)
“The point is that it came out,” Estonia’s Chief Legal Officer of the Government’s Information Office Sten Tikerpe said. “If it had been an old school traditional system with a physical cabinet in the room, we would have never figured it out.”
That sort of explanation works well in Estonia, where trust in government is high and society is heavily digitized. It may prove a harder sell in privacy-obsessed Germany or even in France, where the country’s data regulator issued a warning to a public authority over its COVID-19 tracing app.
For example in Switzerland, which isn’t in the EU but shares concerns about privacy, a proposal for a national digital ID system was voted down earlier this week over security concerns.
Thomas Lohninger, executive director of the digital rights NGO epicenter.works, concedes that there are “obvious benefits” to the Commission’s proposal. But he wants answers on the safeguards the Commission is considering to deal with the potential issues — and how (or if) “pseudonymity” will be assured through any EU-wide system.
“I want the architecture of the system to reassure me when it comes to security and privacy,” he added. “I want the possibility to deep-dive into the source code, to really understand the system.”
Not giving it away
The high degree of sensitivity to privacy and surveillance in many EU countries may explain why the Commission has so far been cagey about the exact shape of its plans.
Brussels is still wavering between different options for rolling out its scheme: Implementing a new digital ID system, strengthening existing legislation or requiring digital identification systems to comply with the bloc’s eSignature Directive, which focuses narrowly on allowing electronic signatures to replace handwritten ones, are all options on the table, according to a presentation dated January 7. (In every case, the digital ID would be rolled out by national authorities in each member country rather than by the EU itself.)
Still, the EU has already taken a few steps in the direction of a digital ID.
The Electronic Identification And Trust Services (eIDAS) regulation, which came into force in 2018, is designed to encourage the implementation of national digital IDs, enabling cross-border electronic transactions and electronic signatures.
But only 14 out of 27 member countries have introduced online authentication systems, with only 55 percent of the bloc’s population having access to one, according to another Commission presentation from September last year.
In most nations of the world, the healthcare sector remains one of the most overburdened. Industry62 is changing that narrative through transformational e-health solutions. But they aren’t even stopping at healthcare; they are transforming multiple spheres within the public and private scene.
Founded in 2005, Industry62 is a holistic IT company at the forefront of making digital solutions in diverse spheres ranging from healthcare to telecoms, banking, green IT, and culture for both the public and private sectors. They specialise in various services such as software architecture framing, UX and visual design, agile development, data analytics, and go-to-market strategy.
“My colleagues who founded the company and I wanted to come up with creative and beneficial projects. We wanted to develop software that would change the world. As co-founders, we had much more freedom to choose projects that were impactful while also developing the company,” says Andrus Altrov, the company’s CEO and co-founder. Under his strategic management, local and international projects such as eAmbulance, Cross-border ePrescriptions, MyHealth@Hand, Frank the Brilliant, Taksu-inssi, and Estonian Digital Forest Register have been successfully brought to life.
Transforming the e-health sphere
Although Industry62 is actively creating digital products for diverse spheres and sectors, e-health has been one of their most dominant fields. Most notably, Industry62 collaborated with Hewlett Packard (HP) to develop the Estonian National Health Information System (ENHIS). ENHIS serves as the central information system that collects the basic medical information and medical history report of all Estonians and resident foreigners for easy assessment.
ENHIS isn’t just a simple data archive; it also connects all Estonian e-health services for the smooth running of operations and swift information recovery. “We are particularly attracted to the impact of digitalisation on healthcare processes and the difference this can make to our lives. People get better care when healthcare services are joined up, and the most effective way of making this difference is through digitisation of data,” says Andrus. As of the last count, 1,536,254 people have their medical data recorded in ENHIS, and the system has 28,640,165 medical documents stored.
Swift healthcare response in time-critical situations
Recent times have shown that the world still lacks the active and swift healthcare response so greatly needed. Yet, in contrast, Estonia is faring so much better, thanks to the available top-notch healthcare system, strategic approach, and dynamic e-health system covering e-services such as the eAmbulance designed by Industry62.
“The eAmbulance digital service is a perfect example of a project that best demonstrates the real value of the Estonian National Health Information System (ENHIS) or (HIS). During an emergency – when time-critical information is vital – ambulance medics can use the eAmbulance app to access and interrogate HIS online for the patient’s data and past medical history. As they handle the emergency using the patient’s medical data, they input the case data and send their summary to HIS. Before the patient arrives at the hospital, the hospital already has access to these emergency notes via HIS for adequate preparation,” Andrus explains.
Breaking medical cross-border boundaries
Imagine having the same or similar medical treatment as you’d receive in your home country wherever you go within Europe. No, you don’t even have to imagine it; it’s already a reality, courtesy of Industry62. The Cross-border ePrescriptions is an e-health project by Industry62 that enables the transference of patient data summaries and the dispense of ePrescriptions and medicine for Europeans wherever they go within Europe. Since the exchange became active, no less than 1,000 Finnish patients traveling in Estonia have collected their descriptions from local pharmacies.
“Finland and Estonia became the first live participants in dispensing medicine using digital prescriptions in European pharmacies for people from other European countries. At the moment, Cross-border ePrescriptions are supported for people from Finland, Croatia, Luxembourg, and the Czech Republic,” Andrus outlines.
Extending dynamic digital innovation to the world
Beyond Estonia, Industry62 has been making waves creating digital services for other European countries and even another continent. One of the countries most constantly in partnership with Industry62 is Finland. At the moment, Industry62 is working with the Finnish Real Estate Management Federation to develop updated digital services to ease their operations. The digital services also help them serve the people better by improving living conditions for apartment dwellers, improving the smooth-running of residences, and making sure housing costs stay on budget.
As already said, Industry62 is servicing clients from far and near, and that “far” goes as farther as another continent – Africa. Joining hands with the Health[e]Foundation, Industry62 created the MyHealth@Hand mobile app to help tackle unsafe birthing situations, which is still a severe problem in several parts of Africa. The app was piloted in Uganda and Tanzania in 2019 and with other African countries expecting launch soon.
The MyHealth@Hand app serves as a doctor-mother communication platform, prenatal/antenatal appointment scheduler, and mom/foetus information database. The project consists of two separate applications: one for the moms-to-be and the other for the healthcare workers.
The impact of Covid-19
Like other companies, Industry62 has been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and its resultants. “In the first instance, some customers reduced orders, and we had to lay off a few people,” notes Andrus, “however, I’m happy to say that demand is recovering; we are hiring again,” he continues.
“There has been a positive impact in the form of a new project. Synlab ordered the TESTI.ME application. This is a Progressive Web App (online) that makes it possible to show coronavirus test results and to generate a certificate swiftly. It’s a much-needed application for people who are travelling. We have also got quite a few customers for Frank the Brilliant.”
Frank the Brilliant is a peer-to-peer reward and insight tool for giving, receiving, and analysing feedback. “It’s a much-needed tool in the current climate: it measures the ‘mood of employees’ in organisations now that most are working from home,” he adds.
What’s next for Industry62?
Digital health is Industry62’s most dominant field, with its e-health clientele spanning governments and private companies. Yet, so much is still left to be done within the health-tech sphere. Industry62 is prepared to seize every opportunity that comes from there. They aren’t afraid of growth and expansion, even if it involves a different or new area.
“I think there is still a great deal we can achieve in Digital Health. This is the area where we expect the most growth in the coming years. But you never know…if we see a good opportunity in a new area, we might take it as well!” Andrus confirms.
Within e-health and beyond that sector, there’s no doubt that Industry62 has brought about game-changing digital solutions yet, they are just getting started on bringing the blissful future to us.
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As digitalisation has reshaped economies across the world, it has also resulted in a shortage of skilled ICT workers. However, Estonia – the country ranking 1st in Europe in OECD’s international survey PISA – has yielded excellent results resolving the shortage with the right educational policies in place.
Estonia’s success derives from comprehensive strategies that focus on sparking young people’s interest in IT education and enabling lifelong ICT retraining in society. The country’s success has set an example for many other countries.
Starting from an early age
In order to attract more young people to ICT fields and introduce them to future possibilities in the area, Estonia launched a programme called ProgeTiger in 2012. The programme is aimed at encouraging preschool, general, and vocational education teachers to use technology – including programming and robotics – more widely in their teaching. „In 9 years we have reached a point where 99% of Estonian kindergartens and 98% of comprehensive schools have taken part in ProgeTiger’s activities in one way or another,“ reports Kristi Salum, the Program Manager at ProgeTiger. However, she points out that it does not mean that 99% of kids are taking part in the program, rather it marks that most institutions have created a chance to learn ICT. Moreover, the learning processes are always adjusted to the age of the children. “If we give children at an early age the knowledge and skills to understand, use and create technology themselves, they will be much more prepared for the future,“ Salum says. She also explains that starting with ICT education at such an early age has made education professionals think more about future education. „When kids start to learn IT at such a young age, we also have to think about what our education system has to offer them at the higher education level,“ explains Salum, bringing up discussions with universities.
Unique collaboration
For a long time, it has been a common understanding in many countries that governments are solely responsible for the provision of education. Signe Ambre, the Program Manager of a governmental initiative called IT Academy, explains that it is thus a challenge of its own to determine whether the ICT graduates meet the expectations of employers. Estonia has once again found an innovative solution by asking employers to contribute to shaping education. „The programme is one of a kind. Together with all the parties, we have set collective objectives that consider the needs of entrepreneurs and state on the one hand, and the abilities of the universities and vocational education institutions on the other,“ Ambre states. The results are excellent, as according to Ambre, every ninth student chooses to study ICT at the bachelor’s and applied higher education level, which she confirms to be optimal. Moreover, the share of those who choose ICT at the master’s level has grown even faster in the last 10 years: every seventh student who enters master’s studies chooses to study ICT.
Women in ICT
A well-known concern in the ICT-sector is the high gender disparity as sector young women are less likely to continue their academic path in IT or choose their career compared to men. According to Robert Lippin, the Deputy Secretary General responsible for secondary and adult education at the Ministry of Education and Research, roughly there are 3 men for every woman in the ICT sector. This pattern is not only perceived in Estonia but in other countries as well. Both state and non-profit organisations have decided on a collective goal to increase the number of women in tech. Several companies have additionally set up their own internal events, meet-ups, and conferences for women in IT. One of the most unique initiatives is the Unicorn Squadmovement, which offers girls aged 8-12 an opportunity to take part in different hands-on activities for learning more about robotics and tech. Today, the club has more than 1600 members, more than 250 mentors, and approximately 130 clubs around Estonia – giving hope that inspiring education and training could be a game-changer. Lippin comments that 40% of students in master’s studies are women, ranking Estonia first in Europe for the share of women in master’s programmes. At the bachelor’s level, Estonia ranks fourth in terms of the percentage of women. Highly active and successful women entrepreneurs have played a major role in introducing girls to ICT, setting a good example for young people.
Lifelong learning
„High demand for ICT specialists and the positive image that opportunities available in the field have created interest in people from various other areas as well,“ Lippin reveals. The interest in lifelong learning has been an inspiration for creating more opportunities for those interested. For example, short intensive courses such as Vali-IT (Choose IT) for learning basic ICT skills have been created. Many companies that are ready to offer further education to those interested, contribute to these programmes as well. ICT has also become integral to other sectors and transformed the way they work. As an example, Estonia’s biggest university, the University of Tartu, has even launched an Information Technology master’s program – “IT for non-experts”,” Lippin describes.
communications manager at the e-estonia briefing centre
Estonia may be a tiny country, but its tech companies have been punching above their weight for years. Be it B.EST Solutions that have successfully implemented mID in Azerbaijan, Proud Engineers helping build India’s digital society, or SK ID Solutions that has issued ca 4 million authentication tokens across Baltic states.
B.EST Solutions has been recognised by the United Nations, Google and Financial Times, EU, OECD, U.S State Department, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Their customers include multinationals, major banks, mobile network operators, and insurance companies, along with international organisations and a wide variety of other clients.
What Estonia does best
The company was founded by an ambitious Estonian woman, Jana Krimpe, chosen among the world TOP100 Influencers in Identity in 2018. It was personal life that led Jana to Azerbaijan, and she couldn’t just sit still. “I thought about what I could do best and concluded that I would try to implement something Estonia does best, and that is, of course, IT. So, in 2010 we became the first X-Road – centrally managed distributed Data Exchange Layer between information systems, and the backbone of e-Estonia – exporters with Cybernetica and Aktors.” It provided a great learning curve for the companies, and later Cybernetica packaged it as a solution to be implemented in other countries.
However, Jana Krimpe and her team quickly realised that times had changed, and the ID-card-based solution, so smoothly at work in Estonia, is not as likely to take off elsewhere. They pivoted quickly and decided to go with mobile-ID instead. “We got the whole m-ID infrastructure, including the creation of the trusted service provision, up and running in six months. This was unprecedented,” Jana Krimpe says. “And a year later, in 2014, all three mobile operators in Azerbaijan started issuing SIMs with mID. It was the third country in the world, which had implemented mID after Finland and Estonia.”
eID is not a standalone thing
With every project, B.EST Solutions’ know-how has deepened, and Jana Krimpe is not looking to implement quick solutions or give empty promises about setting up mobile-ID from scratch. “For any country, the average time for this type of service to start taking off is 5-6 years. I have not seen it happen quicker anywhere. The eID or mID is not a standalone thing; e-services need to be integrated, a lot of networking and communication to the public is done for this to work. We always tell our local partners that they need to be patient. Because there will always come the point where the service providers will come to them, not the other way around.”
Rooting out the shadow economy
For example, Azerbaijan took a gamble and mandated their VAT companies to start declaring taxes electronically. At first, there was some backlash, but later – gratitude due to decreased paperwork and bureaucracy. The second innovative service asked for all employment contracts to be in an only electronic format from day X. The number of official employment contracts in the country increased by 40%. “All the people behind this percentage got access to social security, health insurance, financial loans. There were thousands more mID users, and today all these users alone help the country save up to 2% of GDP,” Jana Krimpe says.
Today, over 1000 e-services are offered to be used with the mID in Azerbaijan. Currently, B.EST has projects underway in Uzbekistan, Georgia, and Kenya, planning to expand to other Central Asian countries and developing regions more generally.
PPP is the key to success
“There are many potential countries with whom we can work, but there are also basic requirements that need to be in place before we can start,” Krimpe emphasises. They always send a lengthy questionnaire to interested parties to evaluate the seriousness and the potential. “There has to be the political will to do it. And basic databases plus laws in place that guarantee the implementation of digital services. If these are lacking, we ask them to contact us after ticking all the necessary boxes. Our strength is flexibility; we don’t implement rigid or fixed solutions. Every country is unique and needs a unique approach. But one thing is certain – successful eID projects happen in public-private partnerships so that all stakeholders can experience how they can benefit from eID.”
AI-based cross-border electronic identity
The Estonian state’s leading partner in providing certification services for national identity documents (ID-card, Mobile-ID, Digi-ID, residence permit card, and e-residents Digi-ID) is SK ID Solutions (SK).
SK was founded in 2001 by two major banks and telecommunications companies to develop certificates and services for Estonian ID-cards and digital signing. Today SK is still owned by these companies’ successors – Scandinavian banks Swedbank and SEB, and telecommunications provider Telia.
With offices in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, SK services more than 1000 organizations, including financial, healthcare, energy, education, and various other private and public sector e-services. SK has over 3.8 million active authentication tokens across Baltic states, meaning every second person in the Baltics has it.
The successful development of Smart-ID earned SK the title of Innovator of the Year at the “Entrepreneurship Competition 2019” organized by Enterprise Estonia and the Estonian Employers’ Confederation.
Alternative to PIN generators – strong customer authentication (SCA)
Their most recent and most popular eID product is Smart-ID – a cross-border mobile app-based solution. It is an internationally recognized secure and convenient solution for authentication in e-services and issuing electronic signatures accepted all over the European Union.
“Smart-ID is a convenient alternative for outdated authentication solutions like bank PIN cards or PIN generators,” says Georg Nikolajevski, SK ID’s Business Development Executive. “Smart-ID is easy to use and free of charge for the end-users. Smart-ID can be used as a single-sign-on solution for different e-services across business sectors and countries. In the future, Smart-ID could be the single authentication solution for all user needs. It allows cross-border solutions to be provided. It can be used to share the burden of customer identification. For example, banks can cover customers in several countries while using this solution. Smart-ID meets the PSD2 SCA requirements and the GDPR. Now empowered with AI-based remote identity verification, Smart-ID can be used in many other EU countries.”
Way through pandemic
A couple of weeks before the global pandemic, SK introduced new biometry and AI-based onboarding method for Smart-ID. Before introducing biometric registration, Smart-ID could only be updated via physical identification at a bank branch or via Mobile-ID or ID-card. During the state of emergency in the spring, when people’s movements were restricted, Smart-ID’s new identification method was the only way for many to conduct necessary activities.
In the next five years, SK aims to make Smart-ID available in all European countries to all EU residents.
A lifestyle business…helping build Digital Societies
Proud Engineers stands out in our eID providers trio the most for their laissez-faire approach. “We are more of a lifestyle business,” says the company’s founder Taavi Kotka, serial-entrepreneur, who also served as Estonia’s former Chief Information Officer, and adds, “If the challenge is interesting enough, we will take it.”
Kotka claims 90% of their portfolio are clients who have found them. “Countries are in a hurry to build a modern digital society,” he explains.
Historically the company has helped many governments and large enterprises, and currently, their primary focus is in India. Together with the largest telecom company Jio, they have created a Jio Research Center with a vision to transform India into a digitally empowered society.
The CIO of Estonia
Kotka remains unfazed. “All of us at Proud Engineers have extensive experience in software development, policymaking, and lawmaking, myself also in the startup world. Experience matters.” And, of course, serving as a country’s CIO helps, too, I suggest.
Kotka agrees but stresses. “In general, we help our clients to understand what it takes from a policy and technology perspective to create a digital society and how to motivate citizens to follow. How to get private sector play along and even lead the whole transformation process.”
“Proud Engineers is the main contractor type of company; we use partners everywhere. Our goal is to put the rails in place and let others ride them,” concludes Kotka.
All three companies will go more in-depth with their solutions and services offered during our next Digital Discussion on electronic identity on March 10th, at 11 AM (+2GMT). Please secure your spot at the high-level, registration-only event by clicking here.
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