REGISTRATON & WELCOME COFFEE
Enablers of a Resilient & Seamless Government
The session is introducing the key elements of the digital government ecosystem. In conversation with Andres Sutt, Minister of Entrepreneurship and Information Technology of the Government of Estonia, opportunities and challenges to make digital government seamless and resilient are discussed.
Digital Resilience in Natural Disasters
Mr. Toimoana will cover Tonga’s initial preparation prior to the volcanic eruptions and what really worked and did not work out after the eruptions. He will also discuss some of the challenges and possible solutions to have in place as a lesson learned from the natural disaster event.
How Digital Ukraine Survives the War
The Deputy Minister will present how Ukraine used existing and new digital government systems, like the DIIA application (where Ukrainian citizens can use digital documents on their smartphones, instead of physical ones, for identification and sharing purposes) and other digital solutions to support people during the war. The presentation also covers how both internally displaced people and refugees abroad were were able to remain connected digitally with Ukraine’s government.
Technologies and Innovations at the Service of the Refugee Crisis in Poland
As a consequence of the Russian attack, an estimated total of 5 million people have already left Ukraine for its neighbouring countries. Poland has welcomed more than 3 million Ukrainian refugees over the recent weeks. Not only shelter away from war has been offered to Ukrainian citizens in Poland, but also equal opportunities in terms of access to multiple services and benefits that the Polish administration offers to its own citizens. The on-boarding of the refugees has been a joint effort from the citizens, administration and businesses alike. One of the areas covered was making sure that the refugees have access to Polish on-line services and stay connected to the closest ones back in Ukraine. Another equally important aspect of handling the crisis is the need to ensure the resilience of public institutions at the national and European level. A properly designed digital state can be a way to maintain the continuity of digital public e-services. Furthermore, the importance of the cloud as a key element in ensuring the functioning of e-services is growing. One of the possibilities, and an option worth considering, is setting up data embassies – a backup of a digital state at all its levels.
How to Prepare the e-Governance for a Crisis?
Enablers of digital government are usually considered as providers of solid baselines for building better public services. Should the enablers of digital government be built only for good times or should the enablers survive also the bad scenarios? Are the enablers also usable and operational during a crisis? During the panel we look enablers from the viewpoint of a crisis.
EXPO ONLINE / NETWORKING
Cybersecurity: Essential Actions to Protect People, Businesses, and Government
The discussion will focus on cybersecurity: Why is cybersecurity needed, how can it be best managed, and what happens when cybersecurity is lacking?
The Global Gateway Strategy and Team Europe’s Approach in Fostering the Digital Transition
The European Commission launched as strategy called the Global Gateway; it links digital and green transition with investments into infrastructure and human capital. During the interview Félix Fernandez-Shaw will elaborate more on the goals of this initiative.
Laying the Groundwork for Digital Services: Case Studies from Africa
The discussion will focus on the preconditions, needs and challenges in developing human-centric and effective digital public services in Africa. The session aims to share practical experiences, good practices and lessons learnt based on real-life examples of developing digital public services in different African countries. This session is organised by the AU-EU D4D Hub, an EU funded project that supports African institutions to create an enabling environment for an inclusive digital transformation.
WELCOME RECEPTION by the City of Tallinn. By invitation only.
MORNING COFFEE
Next step: Digital Sovereignty – How Is it Possible?
Digital sovereignty or tech sovereignty was already high up on the agenda of government leaders. That is even more so the case in the lights of the acute threats to sovereignty of the war in Ukraine. Digital sovereignty is rapidly becoming an important theme for public administrations in their e-governance. They need to contribute to safeguards for sovereignty, whether national or EU, and do so in a sensible and responsible way. They need to consider their choices of foreign and domestic cloud providers. They need clarity on control of critical digital infrastructures and key services such as e-identification. They want to carefully consider AI-based service delivery so that trust and respect continues to be the basis of relationships between citizens, communities, and government. The keynote speech will introduce the need for digital sovereignty as well as the challenges and pitfalls of digital sovereignty for e-governance. The high-level panel will bring together perspectives, from the big picture of how geopolitics affects governments in their digital policies to the practical choices that public administrations need to make for sovereignty-respecting e-government services, and to the values and vulnerabilities of the relationship of citizen and government, where personal sovereignty meets state sovereignty.
What are the New Technologies that Affect Digital Government?
The internet we all use to interact with each other, with companies and governments, has already gone through major generational shifts: from desktop computers and dialup modems, to ever connected mobile phones and cloud computing. In this session we'll discuss what the next wave, so called Web3 will look like, based on community ownership, cryptography and blockchains.
EXPO ON-SITE & ONLINE / NETWORKING / LUNCH
Designing for Complex Systems
There is plenty of complexity in the world around us. We have so much data that we don’t know what to do with it. But sometimes we don’t actually need more data: we need a better understanding of the data we have and better tools to manipulate and work with data in order to make sense of it. As it turns out, complex systems don’t have to be complicated. And that’s where design can help. In this session, Vitaly Friedman, a UX consultant who works with small and large organizations, such as the European Parliament, will explore how evidence-based design can make it easier for all citizens to find what they are looking for and complete tasks they have at hand. We’ll look into ways to manage content, improve navigation and search, and deal with complex forms while keeping usability and accessibility as a top priority. Ultimately, our goal is to improve public e-services for everyone. This session will highlight some reliable strategies and tools to do just that for government organizations.
WORKSHOP: Active e-Citizen Journey
Digital solutions in governance have little meaning and use unless the people believe in the will and commitment of the decision-makers to put the people (citizens) at the centre. The aim of this workshop is to advance the knowledge and skills of the participants on engagement, policy and services development, and digital solutions, via practical examples showing the various ways digital engagement works in Estonia and other countries. We will discuss the topics of digital citizen engagement, trust and digital responsibility, what it is and what it means for the institutions as well as for the citizens, and how to raise awareness among the citizens about digital engagement. Kristina Reinsalu shares the Estonian experience of nudging citizens to be e-citizens and what are the main takeaways from this journey. Róbert Bjarnason demonstrates new platforms for digital engagement which are available for testing and use. Bardhyl Jashari presents the Western Balkan showcase from Increasing Civic Engagement in the Digital Agenda – ICEDA initiative. The participants are also active players in this workshop and they are encouraged to share their stories or dreams of digital engagement!
Building the Next Generation e-Government Through AI
Estonia is an undisputed leader in digital governance and has launched an ambitious AI strategy to transform e-governance. As part of its ambitions, Estonia has the goal of making public services radically easier to use and more accessible, while creating a completely seamless and proactive citizen-centric government. Estonia has already implemented more than 80 AI use cases in government, with the ambitious goal of implementing more than 130 AI use cases by 2022. Some of the use cases involve a citizen virtual assistant, Bürokratt, to provide public services through voice-based interaction. During his keynote, the Government’s Chief Data Officer Ott Velsberg presents how Estonia’s government is transforming government, its greatest successes thus far, and what hasn’t worked.
How to Provide e-Services to Overcome the Digital Divide?
Different characteristics, ranging from social or economic to cultural, can define the usage of e-services. How to compensate the effects of the Digital Divide when providing e-enabled public services? Would AI or biometric solutions be the game changers?
Improve Education Systems’ Resilience by Reinventing the Role of Technology
At Intel, we have been working at the intersection of technology and education for many years, focusing on how technology can enhance the teaching and learning experience, improve outcomes, and build more resilient education systems. In the last two years, we have launched three new initiatives designed to support educators’ efforts to close the digital divide. In this presentation we share what we’ve learned and hear from educators and learners about the innovative ways that they are using technology to better outcomes.
EXPO ON-SITE & ONLINE / NETWORKING
Digital Government Excellence: Lessons from Effective Digital Leaders
There is growing body of know-how on what to do to make government and countries advance digitally. However, as important - if not more - is how to do it, and especially how to lead such efforts. The role and methods of leadership for digital transformation of governments have not gained as much attention. That is why Siim Sikkut, former Government CIO of Estonia, set out to capture such practices and inspiring stories by talking to 20 remarkable digital government leaders from around the world. These stories and insights will be published as a book Digital Government Excellence, due out by June 2022. In this session, first through a keynote by Siim Sikkut and then at the panel discussion, the panelists will shed light into how to lead governments successfully into and through digital change. The topics covered will include: • Different roles that leaders have to play and critical success factors • Leadership styles and practices for effective delivery of digital strategies and reforms • What to watch out for as a leader - potential pitfalls.
WORKSHOP: Teaching for the Future with Intel Skills for Innovation
With the rapid increase of technology adoption in every aspect of life, our education systems are challenged to produce students with the right skills for the future. This session will cover the Intel' Skills For Innovation (Intel' SFI) Initiative and the resources available to educators to help them prepare their students with the mindsets and skillsets of tomorrow.
Workshop by Estonian ICT Cluster “Roadmap for Effective e-Government Ecosystem
Estonian ICT Cluster experts will give practical guidance through the main steps of developing a resilient digital transformation roadmap, covering topics such as data and registries, data exchange, identification, development of services, using emerging technologies, etc. Everyone is welcome to join in the conversation!
Next step: “Will People Make Policy Digitally?”
The aim of the session is to introduce an innovative method for digital policy-making: crowdsourcing. Learn how it works in theory and which are the digital tools to put it into practice. The method puts citizens at the centre and is based on the principle that the crowd is power and that digital tools remarkably increase that power. First, the visionary view on democracy innovations is given and the concept of crowdsourcing is introduced. The presentation and examples show how the collective wisdom of a crowd could be used by governments facing all sorts of challenges – from the Green Deal to Covid or War. Second, the keynote is followed by a short introduction of an ongoing crowdsourcing initiative on air quality in Tallinn (and some other European cities), and what are the main challenges in putting theory into practice. There is also a room for questions from the audience, reflections and discussions in the session.
NETWORKING EVENT @ Kultuurikatel
MORNING COFFEE
What’s Next for the World’s Most Advanced Digital Governments?
Mike Bracken and Luukas Ilves will discuss the challenges faced by advanced digital governments, including the need to connect technology to service delivery, to reflect the dynamic culture of the internet economy in government, to tackle the cost of legacy and take advantage of new business models (foremost among them cloud), all while staying within budgets and striving toward cybersecurity.
Governments Plans to Make the Digital Ecosystem More Resilient
Developing Digital Single Markets - Digital Transformation of Cross Border Cooperation and Integration
With national digital transformation advancing, more and more governments realize the need of providing interfaces and possibilities for cross-border data exchange and service integration. While technical interoperability seems feasible, the legal and organizational collaboration seems to be barriers to taking down national and regional digital “silos”. How can we foster this integration, how can we build digital single markets creating more public value? To begin we would like to learn how important (if at all) is at the moment the cross-border and regional collaboration for digital transformation. Do governments recognize the need for cooperation? If yes, then is it entirely about harmonization and interoperability or are there also initiatives towards jointly addressing problems and finding solutions for these problems together?
WORKSHOP: by GovStack
Join the GovStack team for a hands-off experience in the co-design of government services based on user needs and using a building block approach. You will learn how to architect a digital service solution using reusable software components/building blocks (BB) & technical specifications from GovStack Global - like digital identity and verification, interoperability, digital signature, payments, among others - to accelerate the digitization of government services. This approach saves time and resources, allowing governments to upscale by using the same component across different digital services. We look forward to collaborating with you!
EXPO ON-SITE & ONLINE / NETWORKING / LUNCH
How Can Donor Organizations Provide Rapid Response?
The panel will cover topics on how the donor organizations can provide rapid response to the countries and regions in a crisis, so that countries can build or maintain the necessary infrastructure and digital solutions for e-Government to work. The panelist will also provide suggestions for donor organizations and governments on how to better prepare for and work in crisis situations, what are good examples and what have been the challenges.
WORKSHOP: How to Develop a Good e-Service
This is a workshop full of active brainstorming and discussions. It focuses on where to start service development, how to identify a problem and find the best solution, how to engage stakeholders and which other dimensions and activities to consider before the actual development can start.
Should We Automate Just Because We Can?
What should determine the pace and extent of automation in the public sector? Should it be technology, law, policy, ethics? If technology does not set limits, is there a point at which governments nevertheless should say that automation should stop and the human role should be maintained? Our panellists, with experience from the public and private sector, as well as academia, from a range of countries, with backgrounds in law and policy, examine these questions. Rather than trying to give clear answers, they help us to ask the correct questions. This is a territory that transgresses a number of disciplines, that requires an ability to understand topics as different as philosophy, psychology, technology and law, and that contains questions that every government will increasingly have to deal with.
EXPO ON-SITE & ONLINE / NETWORKING
AI for Democracy
Max Tegmark will discuss strategies for ensuring that rapidly improving artificial intelligence (AI) technology helps rather than harms democracy. I argue that while recent discussion tends to focus on digitalization of government services, we need more focus on e-democracy and empowering voters.
The Balancing Act of Regulating AI
The panel that concludes this year's conference will take a look at the AI landscape from the needs and possibilities of national and global regulatory frameworks for AI, and other emerging digital technologies. As the drivers of these technologies are not the governments but private companies, specifically a few of them that further concentrate such competences, the national agendas on accepting or rejecting the private companies' utilization of AI on cross-boarder services needs to be subject of careful consideration for governments. At the same time, digital services provided by governments may use number of the AI applications for better service design, including, but not limited to, the aspects of empowering citizens and e-democracy.