Your Excellency, Mr Volkan Bozkir, President of the General Assembly, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,
I am pleased to be joining you today from Tallinn for this High-Level Thematic Debate on Digital Cooperation and Connectivity.
A few months ago, Estonia celebrated the 25th birthday of the Tiger Leap Programme – a national education digitalisation initiative that gave impetus for the development of an open, transparent, and inclusive digital society, leaving no-one behind. Within a few years, all schools in Estonia were connected into the Internet, public Internet access points were opened all over the country, and in cooperation with the government and the private sector, the public was taught how to use the Internet, and how to do it safely.
Today, we are facing another digital leap. The Covid-19 caused crises has put digital technologies higher in our agendas than ever before, it has boosted the development of innovative digital tools among governments and private sector alike.
I believe that last year has also forced us to rethink digital transformation. The Covid-19 crises has proved that we as people, businesses, governments, and countries share similar problems, and that our solutions to these problems are similar, too. Online education and distance learning, telemedicine and remote healthcare, digital authentication and signature, Covid-19 applications – these are just a few examples of digital responses to the issues we all face. This means that we do not need to invest in new, duplicative and costly digital developments, but follow on from what is already in place.
Here, Estonia together with Germany, ITU, and DIAL are collaborating to develop a digital governance reference architecture, GovStack consisting of different open source digital governance building blocks that are adjustable, replicable, and scalable, and that will become accessible for everyone. Basing on our twenty years of experience with data governance and sharing, Estonia is actively engaging also with the WHO to create a Global Trust Framework.
The aim of this initiative is to provide cost-effective and sustainable solutions to global health data interoperability taking into account the maturity of all the country situations, particularly in low resource settings.
The UN Secretary General’s “Roadmap for Digital Cooperation” comes at a critical point for digitalisation, as digitalisation requires global partnerships and collaborations. Estonia contributes actively to this effort, particularly through the Trust and Security Roundtable, and is also glad to cooperate within the Digital Public Goods Alliance.
I would like to thank you, once again, for this important event today.
Thank you.