Digital Government Podcast

In today's episode, we invite you to explore the United Kingdom's government approach to designing public digital services for citizens with Lisa Talia Moretti . How do they design services that actually work for all – with their diverse needs, vulnerabilities, and behaviours in society?  Tune in to find out! 

In the Western Balkans, Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and governments are on a quest to increase civic engagement in the digital agenda. Take all the initials of this task, ICEDA , and you have the ongoing project that e-Governance Academy is currently involved in within the region. Recently, stakeholders took the chance to visit Tallinn for a study visit. We caught up with two representative...

In the Horn of Africa there is yet another blue pin on the world map of interoperability supported by X-Road technology. The Government of Djibouti via ANSIE has recently completed the implementation of the data exchange platform, marking another step toward more efficient and effective public service delivery. On e-Governance Academy’s side, Programme Director of Technology Heiko Vainsalu has man...

In today's episode, we take a  look at how does effective digital transformation look from above ? From the perspective of those who need to inspire, guide, and organize teams so that plans become policies, and then action. We are talking about Government CIOs, a role whose specifics we explored already in an episode with Siim Sikkut on 27 April. Let’s take now a look at five lessons learnt t...

The wait could not have been faster. Just one week to go to the e-Governance Conference 2022, to discuss resilient and seamless governance with high-level government representatives, experts, and academics. So let us do the honours with an introduction, and a look forward, from Estonia. Luukas Kristjan Ilves , freshly appointed Chief Information Officer of the Government of Estonia, features in th...

Siim Sikkut barely needs any introduction. 17 years in the civil service, of which five as Chief Information Officer of the Government of Estonia. Throughout this time, many of our readers and listeners have had the chance to meet him, or hear from his team about what a constant process of digital transformation looks like. At the upcoming e-Governance Conference in May, he will be among the chang...

Less than a month to go to the 2022 e-Governance Conference. To mark this countdown milestone, we called back a known voice of the Digital Government Podcast and the Conference, introducing the ever-more-pressing theme of digital sovereignty.  Taking the floor is Paul Timmers , a scholar at various European universities and former director at the European Commission for e‑government, health and ag...

For this episode of the Digital Government Podcast, we figuratively fly with our microphones to Africa. Specifically, to Kenya and Nigeria – where winners of the first Africa D4D Journalism Competition are based. 175 journalists from 35 countries participated, signalling a great response to the call submissions made by the African Union – European Union (AU-EU) Digital for Development (D4D) Hub pr...

Today's episode features Giovanni Allegretti , senior researcher and coordinator of the PhD programme “Democracy in the 21st century” at the University of Coimbra (Portugal). He has worked for over 20 years on citizen participation in budgeting and territorial management. Based on his abounding experiences, he casts light on how crowdsourcing, matched with technology, can enhance and amplify...

In today's episode, we continue to introduce the speakers of the upcoming e-Governance Conference on 10 - 12 May.  Vitaly Friedman is an author and UX designer who is right now involved in the navigation improvement of European Parliament websites - there are altogether 150 webpages. In this episode, we explore how design and clear principles can help public authorities ease citizens’ journey...

In today's podcast, Hannes Astok , a member of the e-Governance Academy Board, sheds light on the two main keywords that should describe the future goals of digital transformation for every government organisation - resilience and seamlessness .  Tune in to the episode to find out why these features are critical for any digital government! Interested in more? Join the e-Governance Conference...

Yurii Kopytin, Cybersecurity Component Leader of EU4DigitalUA project and general architect of Ukrainian data exchange platform the Trembita system, works now 18 hours per day by safeguarding the Ukrainian digital government, keeping the Trembita system functional and fighting with cyber attacks and fake news together with the government authorities of Ukraine.  Even the workload and conditions ar...

Something might have caught many observers by surprise in Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine. After a solid history of cyber threats that could be linked back to the Federation’s territory, cyber warfare seems to not be playing a major role in the attackers’ plans this time.  It hasn’t been the same in the past, and no one guarantees the current situation can’t change in a matter of weeks, or ev...

This week, the world looks quite different from what it used to. We’re here to talk about a tragedy taking shape just before our eyes – the war in Ukraine .  Oleh Burba is not a war correspondent, but a Component Leader in our EU4DigitalUA team in Kyiv, Ukraine. With him, we look at how safety suddenly had to become the priority, and how the e-Governance Academy team there is dealing with the quic...

Can a digital society exist sustainably without e-citizens? Who are the e-citizens - the user the e-services or something more? This is a topic we will discuss today with e-democracy expert Kristina Reinsalu.  In this episode, she introduces us to the e-citizen concept and to the digital nudging in society that supports the citizens' use of digital tools and better engagement in decision-maki...

In today's episode, IT-visionary Linnar Viik talks about the post-pandemic trends of teaching and learning at schools, and shares with us the findings from the survey he conducted among teachers and parents in Estonia. Listen to the discussion and find out how did the schools in various countries react to the lockdowns and how did the experiences that we gained from lockdowns change the expec...

Every digital transformation journey needs a good place to start from. What’s the first step? Understanding where you stand, what are your valuable assets, how to move forward from there, and what to focus on first. The Digital Readiness Review does just that. For a long, e-Governance Academy has been offering this analysis to both governments and businesses – to pinpoint strengths, and weaker spo...

Behind a successful cyber attack, it is very often the poor cyber hygiene of internet users or employees of an organisation, as revealed by the analysis of cyber incidents. Thus, the demand of being cyber-wise concerns every citizen, and the government as well.  In this episode, Lauri Tankler , lead analyst of the Estonian Information System Authority, and Merle Maigre , senior expert on cybersecu...

AI is one of the technologies that influences the public sector service provision and also our expectations towards it. In today's episode, we invite you to explore how are governments approaching the use of artificial intelligence in public service provision. Consider Estonia, as a case study – and let Ott Velsberg , Chief Data Officer of the Estonian Government, be our guide.   The country’...

Today we invite you to follow the government CIO’s special edition! Two former leaders of digital transformation, Siim Sikkut from Estonia and Randall Brugeaud from Australia, cast light on the trends that governments should follow in their digital transformation activities to benefit from pandemic lessons learned.  In the episode, our guests share their views on how to keep an innovation-driven m...

With the year-end approaching, we could not let this opportunity slip for a proper wrap up of 2021. Hannes Astok , Executive Director at e-Governance Academy, gladly bears the weight of this responsibility in the latest episode of the Digital Government Podcast. Remote work and cybersecurity are the topics that dominated the digital transformation landscape this past year. While flexibility is the...

The number of mobile users is already exceeding 7 billion worldwide, and 3 billion of them are using smartphones. The rising mobile penetration has pushed governments to develop services that could be used via mobile phone. On the other hand, more and more governments are exploring how to benefit from AI by providing public services. In this episode, we will explore with Margus Simson , the Chief...

The problem with fake news is becoming more and more topical for every public organisation. Due to that, we invited Dr Katrin Nyman-Metcalf, the Senior Expert on Legal Framework to the Digital Government Podcast to cast light on the freedom of expression in the digital age and the problem of fake news from a legal perspective.  In this episode,  we walk through the following questions:  Can we &qu...

Based on what trends we have witnessed in advanced digital societies -  the next level of public services will be fully automated services that are based on AI and Machine Learning. In this episode, a distinguished legal expert on digital governance topics Katrin Nyman-Metcalf covers another side of the coin - essential and ethical dilemmas behind that process/development. She says that the key de...

Despite a continued global vaccine rollout, COVID19's shadow remains large and limiting for all government bodies around the world. The need to cut through COVID fatigue with strong leadership has never been more urgent. Now the government leaders themselves play a crucial online role in shielding teams and policies from criticism and misinformation. In today's episode, we explore with R...