TALLINN – The Estonian Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications signed memorandum of understanding with Microsoft, represented by Microsoft Estonia, to enable public sector organizations to continue to unlock the benefits of cloud computing and artificial intelligence.
The memorandum of understanding will support Estonian public services in accelerating the transition to digital government, improving cooperation and communication of government employees and innovating services to citizens, the ministry said in a press release.
“The consolidation and modernization of the government infrastructure will strengthen the benefits of cloud services for the entire public sector and, as a result, significantly improve the accessibility, safety and efficiency of public services for our citizens,” Minister of Entrepreneurship and Information Technology Andres Sutt said. “Among our top priorities is ensuring compliant, safe and secure digital environment for all Estonian citizens,” he stressed.
Cloud solutions have already been playing an important role in Estonian national cloud policy. “The ministry has launched and led several projects, in collaboration with Microsoft, aimed at leveraging benefits of cloud. The most recent example is #krattAI, a network of AI enabling citizens to use public services via virtual assistants, through voice-based interaction in fluent Estonian,” Sutt added.
“Estonia has a strong track record of digital-first governance and future-oriented policies which foster a strong offering of digital public services, a vibrant startup ecosystem and tech entrepreneurship. At a time where organizations of all kinds are looking to harness the power of digital transformation, it is encouraging to see the Estonian government opting for our Azure cloud and AI to accelerate the transition of e-Estonia to the cloud to benefit all citizens,” Ralph Haupter, head of Microsoft’s Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) markets, said.
“People value the freedom of using digital services and cloud solutions are an integral asset in making them broadly accessible and easy to use for all. Microsoft is committed to working with our partners in helping drive digital transformation for people and organizations around the world,” Haupter added.
A protocol of common intent to build an undersea tunnel between Finland and Estonia is due to be signed by the countries’ governments on Monday.
The Estonian cabinet, meeting on Thursday, gave its consent to Taavi Aas, the minister of economic affairs, to sign the agreement. Its contents will not be made public until after the signing.
The deal is a step closer to work beginning on the world’s longest undersea tunnel, estimated to cost around $20bn, although it does not commit either side to the project.
However, it does allow the project to gain the imprimatur of the EU’s Trans-European Transport Network programme, making it eligible for EU funding.
As reported by Estonian news site ERR, Estonian prime minister Kaja Kallas said: “In the case of such a huge project, it is important that both countries express their will. I hope that the protocol will be signed and that we can move forward with preparations for the possible construction of the tunnel by the state.”
After the signing, the Ministry of Economic Affairs will relaunch the Tallinn–Helsinki Tunnel Working Group, which will include representatives from both governments as well as the Tallinn and Helsinki city governments.
The tunnel would form the final link in the Rail Baltica route, intended to orientate Baltic states towards the EU (RB Rail AS/CC BY-SA 4.0)
The ministry must now submit an overview of the project development to the government in the third quarter.
Previously, Estonia had expressed scepticism about the idea (see further reading). In 2019, Aas commented: “We need a clear understanding of where the money is coming from and in what amount. Where are the guarantees that it will be completed? The developer hasn’t been able to respond how it’s estimated the volume of people that will be traveling through there.”
The project was first suggested by Peter Vesterbacka, a developer of the Angry Birds app, as a twin-bore 103km-long tunnel that would form the final leg of the EU’s Rail Baltica project.
A feasibility study was concluded in February 2018. It found that by 2050, demand would reach 12.5 million passengers and 4 million tonnes of freight a year. This gave a cost-benefit ratio of only 0.45, owing to the high capital cost, but the study recommended the scheme on the basis of its impact on regional development, which it estimated at between €4bn and €6.9bn a year.
Top image: The Estonian capital of Tallinn is expected to receive a development boost from the tunnel (Maigi/CC BY-SA 3.0)
Estonia’s digitisation success story has been a hard sell for larger countries that believe such changes are only possible in smaller countries. The deployment of a new secure data exchange system in Ukraine may change that attitude. Called Trembita, the platform is already the country’s digital backbone for e-governance and e-services and connects more than 80 authorities across the sprawling country.
The system’s moniker is a nod to Ukraine’s pastoral roots: a trembita is a long wooden horn used by Ukrainian highlanders to announce births, funerals, weddings, and other occasions. Yet Trembita is anything but folksy. It’s been a technological step change for Ukrainians and a transformational experience for the Estonian team behind it.
The biggest project yet
“It’s the biggest project yet for the E-Governance Academy,” says Mari Pedak, senior consultant at the EGA, a nonprofit think tank headquartered in Tallinn, Estonia. “In total, the EGA has worked in more than 100 countries, and I have worked in 30 countries,” Pedak says, “but Ukraine is the biggest country, and this project is the biggest one I have dealt with.”
The EGA is a joint initiative of the Estonian government, the Open Society Institute, and the United Nations Development Programme. It supports the transfer of know-how and practice concerning e-governance and e-services to collaborators and with IT firms, assists in the design, selection, and implementation of solutions.
‘Excellent reference for Estonia’
For the Trembita project, EGA worked with Cybernetica, the Estonian IT firm behind its X-Road data exchange infrastructure and i-voting system, and Ukraine’s Ministry of Digital Transformation. SoftExpansion, a Ukrainian IT company, also assisted in developing a data exchange system based on Cybernetica’s Unified Exchange Platform, or UXP, but tailored specifically to the needs of Ukrainians. The result, Trembita, showcases not only Estonia’s digitisation expertise but its applicability in a sizable country of 44 million people.
“It’s an excellent reference for Estonia and the EGA because usually, we have heard that e-governance is successful because Estonia is so small and that it can’t be implemented in bigger countries,” says Pedak. “But if we can be successful here, it’s evidence that good things can happen in big countries too.”
The decision to digitise
Trembita’s origins stretch back half a decade. While previous governments had looked into digitisation, they had not committed to it. Then the 2014 revolution in Ukraine happened and the rollout of a new version of X-Road. The government decided to focus on digitisation. In 2016, Pedak was tapped to lead EGOV4Ukraine, an EU-supported digitisation project. The effort involves participants from Denmark, Estonia, Germany, Poland, Sweden, and Slovenia and commenced in November, with an end date of June 2021.
Two tangible outcomes of EGOV4Ukraine have been the Trembita system and Vulyk, a modern information system for roughly 600 administrative service centers across Ukraine. Decentralisation has been the ideal for Ukrainian policymakers to strengthen regions and empower local municipalities, called hromadas. The partners rolled out Trembita in 2018, with the first data exchanges occurring in 2019. Since then, 180 different electronic interactions and services are ensured via Trembita, with more than a million data exchanges monthly.
eBaby
Some popular services among Ukrainians include eBaby, which gives parents of newborns access to nine services within 15 minutes, rather than dealing with multiple government offices to file paperwork. ID-14, the primary identity card application service in Ukraine, also relies on Trembita. Soon, Ukrainians will be able to change their place of residence online.
Pedak credits Ukrainian government officials with seeing the system through implementation.
“It’s most critical and most important to have the political will,” says Pedak. “It was important in the Nineties in Estonia, and it is crucial in countries like Ukraine,” she says.
While Trembita is invisible to users as a backbone data exchange system, these projects have raised awareness of Estonia in Ukraine at large, Pedak notes. “Estonia is a well-known and important partner for Ukraine, even though we are small,” says Pedak. “Most know that Estonia has been successful in e-governance development.”
Estonian principles, Ukrainian cryptography
Cybernetica has been the lead IT partner for the development of Trembita. According to Riho Kurg, head of data exchange technologies at Cybernetica, while X-Road and Trembita are “practically the same” from a usage point of view, they have different internal mechanisms, in part because the Ukrainian government insisted on using Ukrainian cryptography, which gives Trembita another cryptographic layer over international standard algorithms. Trembita also has increased security around signature verification and more protection at the operating system level.
“Don’t forget, Ukraine is a country at war,” comments Kurg. “Every IT program has to go through a rigorous certification process, testing, code analysis, everything,” he says.
Creating Trembita using Ukrainian cryptography was a challenge, even for the seasoned team at Cybernetica. “There were lots of technical issues, especially regarding speed and scalability because Ukrainian libraries weren’t initially optimised for this kind of heavy use,” says Kurg. He notes that development was done hand in hand with a few local partners, SoftXpansion among them.
“This work was challenging because we had to support library development at the same time,” Kurg adds. “We used Estonian principles with Ukrainian cryptography, a unique combination for a system.”
Digitisation doesn’t discriminate by size
Knowledge around the system has since been transferred to Ukrainian partners, which will be responsible for maintaining and elaborating on Trembita in the future, according to Kurg. That way, the system’s deployment is not just creating a platform and leaving, but transferring expertise to Ukraine so that it can continue to refine its ecosystem, just as Estonia does.
Many believe that e-governance is only possible in smaller countries, but not in a bigger country like Ukraine. But this project has shown that such solutions can be deployed in a larger country very successfully.
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digital transformation adviser at the e-estonia briefing centre
When it comes to comparing how well different states have been coping with the pandemic, we often focus on the number of infections per capita or the number of people who have been hospitalised. Of course, this is an essential issue to talk about and helps governments make proper decisions. However, is this drawing the best picture of the resilience of a state?
I doubt it. Due to the restrictions, most of us must work and study from home. But closing shops, entertainment venues, and businesses have had a significant impact on the economic situation. Digitalisation has helped companies to continue running their businesses, serve customers, and offer services. Today I would like to take a closer look at how Estonia has been coping with the crisis – besides focusing on the infected people only – and bring out some sectors that have helped citizens continue their everyday lives.
The smallest GDP decline in the EU
The pandemic has drastically affected consumer spending, investment, trade market, capital flows, and supply chains. Estonia’s gross domestic product (GDP) decreased by 1,2 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2020, the smallest decline in the European Union. We are expecting some positive changes this year to see the GDP growing again by the end of 2021. But why is that? Analysts say that even though in spring 2020, the manufacturing field got hit, trade already showed recovery. The import and export of goods increased thanks to trade in electronic equipment and chemical products (by 14,4% and 8,7%). The Estonian Bank predicts the economic growth to speed up to 5,9% per cent by the end of this year. And if everything goes by the master plan, by 2022, Estonian Bank expects economic growth to return to the level of good old 2019.
Any link to digitalisation?
Is there any evident link to digitalisation? We cannot say that clearly, but I would not underestimate the impact. Transforming your business model and operating your business through e-channels has advantages. Also, I am convinced that the new normal will allow us to work partly remotely, which helps different groups of people be engaged in the labour market depending on their unique needs.
Estonians now only need to do two things on paper
But let’s now cover some amendments that helped us to cope with the pandemic. It is widely known that there are only a few things Estonian have to proceed with on paper. Before the crisis, the list consisted of three items. By spring of 2020, we could cross out one of these – notary transactions for buying a property.The Chamber of Notaries worked out a solution, this time in partnership with the private sector. To identify yourself in notarial acts, we can now use Veriff’s biometric face recognition technology. The remote verification is carried out using the electronic identity – we can choose between the Estonian ID card,digital ID, mobile-ID, or even e-residency digital ID. Therefore, you can skip taking the risk by heading to the notary office in person and additionally also save lots of time. And speaking of growing during the crisis, Veriff recently secured 69 million $ in series funding to grow identity verification business and combat online fraud.
Electronic ID assists the government meetings
What else can be done by using electronic ID to pretend we still operate on an everyday basis? Switching over to remote working has also been smooth as we have been signing documents for more than 15 years by using digital signatures. That helps both the companies proceed with the papers at a high-level speed and even assists arrange the government’s e-cabinet meetings from a distance. The number of digital signatures given has drastically increased.
Record number of people i-voting
The local elections of councils will be held in October 2021. Several countries have had to postpone their elections due to the pandemic, which is in some ways understandable. But it would not be acceptable here, in Estonia, where elections have been held online since 2004. The last EU Parliament elections in 2019 showed the record (46%) number of people voting by i-voting application. I have to admit I am incredibly excited to see what these numbers will turn out this time.
We could also talk about how well the educational system worked during the COVID-19 crisis in a wholly digital state thanks to e-learning platforms or how to avoid going to the doctor thanks to e-prescriptions. But my point was to show that there are many other factors to understand the resilience of a state. One thing is definite – it is time to take advantage of digitalisation and shape the future.
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Family physicians and the Estonian Health Insurance Fund have started using an application developed by Estonian logistics startup, Sixfold along with a team of volunteers. Their aim is to facilitate more efficient distribution and delivery of covid-19 vaccines.
At the beginning of March, a joint workgroup was assembled by the Estonian state and various leading tech entrepreneurs, to find ways in which the private sector could contribute to resolving the Coronavirus crisis.
The challenge set focused on how vaccines could better reach family physicians and onwards to the general public, and was chosen from amongst the ideas offered by the workgroup. A digital vaccine delivery solution was created within three weeks that, as of today, is being used by the planners of the Health Insurance Fund and physicians. The application helps to save thousands of valuable work time hours every month through the planning and ordering of vaccines.
It’s vitally important that the application be used to find the best possible sequence of vaccination, taking into consideration the limited availability of vaccines, risk group priority and people’s locations. As a result, the pressure on the healthcare system will be reduced, and in turn, lives will be saved.
Through source data based on the vaccine deliveries arriving in the country and the COVID-19 risk groups, the solution responds by proposing automatic vaccine distribution to more than 700 family physicians throughout Estonia, taking into consideration the size of the risk groups in their list of patients. The family physicians can then order the required quantities and confirm their orders for the Health Board to begin fulfilment. The application also provides family physicians with a clear overview of the preliminary information on pending deliveries.
The Estonian Association of Family Physicians chairman of the board, Le Vallikivi, said that as there are still not enough vaccines arriving in the country to be distributed to everyone that requires them, the distribution of vaccine quantities has become increasingly difficult. “From next week, we can begin to consider the size of risk groups each family physician has, as a result of which, the distribution of vaccines will become increasingly more complicated. The new solution created by these volunteers will greatly assist in reducing this complexity,” added Vallikivi.
According to the leader of the workgroup, Magnus Hiie, the pandemic requires fast and determined action, instead of the usual drawn-out planning processes. “We are coming from the startup world where such an approach is a daily occurrence, and we are happy that we can now use our experience for the benefit of the Estonian people,” Hiie added.
The application for vaccine deliveries was developed and delivered to the state free of charge by the founders of Sixfold and the company’s past and existing employees Magnus Hiie, Priit Haamer, Marko Klopets, Tõnu Runnel and the venture capitalist, Indrek Kasela. Sixfold offers visibility services in the field of logistics throughout Europe. Sixfold became known throughout Europe a year ago with the free map application that displayed the congestion at state borders caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
The Health Insurance Fund’s chairman of the board, Rain Laane, stated that volunteers are invaluable in these times of crisis. “In these difficult times, it’s a joy to see that citizens are coming to the assistance of those dealing with solving the crisis. All help received is of great assistance,” noted Laane.
The pace of vaccinations and the quantities of supply have significantly increased. According to Minister of Health and Labour, Tanel Kiik. “There are more than 200,000 people in Estonia that are protected against COVID-19 with at least one dose. The majority of those vaccinated have received an injection within the last four weeks, whereas it took 10 weeks to vaccinate the first hundred thousand people. The pace has therefore increased greatly,” claimed Minister Kiik. “We must constantly make the combat against COVID-19 more efficient. The rapid and effective organisation of the vaccination program of utmost importance here. I give recognition to the voluntary entrepreneurs and all parties, for their vital contribution in simplifying the work of the healthcare system and family physicians.”
The volunteers will continue working on, modifying and adding to the application over the coming weeks. The participants in the workgroup on behalf of the state were the Health Insurance Fund, Ministry of Social Affairs, Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications, Health Board, Centre for Health and Well Being Information Systems (TEHIK), as well as the Information System Authority (RIA).
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