1 June, Foreign Minister Eva-Maria Liimets gave a speech at a Digital Public Goods Alliance meeting at the UN. In her speech, the minister underlined the importance of digitalisation, highlighting how Estonia has successfully built an open and inclusive digital society based on trust, transparency and people-centred values.
“In the 1990s, Estonia had to build its institutions from scratch and digitalisation played an essential role in this. Today, 99% of our public services are available online at all times,” the minister said.
Minister Liimets underlined that Estonia has shared its e-state journey and solutions with countries across the world. “We have seen remarkable results in our cooperation projects; Estonia’s X-road is known from Brazil to Japan. We promise to continue developing open-source AI solutions similar to Bürokratt, and, more urgently, helping Ukraine build an open and user-friendly digital society,” the minister said.
She noted that digitalisation required knowledge sharing and global partnerships, as the values we integrate into our digital architecture now will determine the direction of the 21st century going forward. “I am delighted to say that the Digital Public Goods Alliance is one of the partners with whom we can share and develop open-source digital solutions and services. This is a crucial development cooperation contribution from Estonia, delivered efficiently and reaching far beyond the financial aid we provide,” the foreign minister added.
Digital Public Goods is a UN digital cooperation initiative that Estonia recently joined. The aim of this cooperation is to share digital solutions to contribute to the development of states. The meeting was initiated by Norway, Sierra Leone, UNICEF and the UNDP.
In addition to discussions, several countries and organisations pledged to advance an open-source digital society.
