 to our second session this session is on the digital revolution fostering innovation infrastructure and investment We have our speakers on stage. They're each going to have ten minutes And you'll know who doesn't want to ask and answer any questions because if they go over ten minutes It's to cushion at the question time. So hopefully that's an incentive to keep everybody on the ten minutes I also want to make you aware that there's been a change of speaker from Latvia Mr. Roland Straddins, councillor of the Minister on Digital in Latvia Will contribute in the place of our tours Tom Plesch, which is in your program book So thank you Roland for joining us. Now. It's my pleasure to introduce our first speaker for the digital session It's Mr. Tonus Nirkus ambassador at large for digital fairs in Estonia. Please welcome Tonus Thank you very much indeed. And it's my great pleasure and honor to to be here today with you and to speak about the digital cooperation between Nordic Baltic countries and Ireland and specifically from the point of view of public services and I will make three Points touch upon three issues. First of all, very briefly about Estonian e-services ecosystem Secondly, I will talk about the Nordic Baltic cooperation from the Estonian perspective, of course and then Give some ideas from our side about the Nordic Baltic and Irish cooperation in the digital area So very very briefly about where we are in terms of e-services development in Estonia We have started to develop our e-commerce system more than 20 years ago Today we have reached a stage where practically all the public services are available digitally with the exception of three services, which are kind of major life-changing Events like buying real estate or getting married Secondly the essential features of the e-commerce system In Estonia, they are quite unique. So I have kind of underlined them here in the presentation first of all, we have kind of a unique infrastructure the digital ID which is compulsory for every person who lives in Estonia and the digital interoperability system what we call X-Road which connects all the different databases in Estonia second feature is that the services are built in a very user-friendly way so the take-up rate by the citizens and businesses is very high and Thirdly, the privacy and security concerns have been taken into account right from the beginning So the secure by design principle has been always one of the founding principles of our e-commerce system What we have paid quite a lot of attention to educating the users of the different digital services starting from the school kids of course, but not forgetting also the elderly So we have a special program targeted towards retired people and the popularity of this is very high and Finally, I would like to underline the cooperation between the government and the private sector Which has been very successful vast majority of the services what we use today in Estonia Are actually developed by the Estonian tech companies Estonian tech companies, not the multinationals So the cooperation with the government has been very positive and very good with regard to the Nordic and Baltic cooperation the ministers for digital development of the Nordic Baltic countries declared in 2017 already the ambition to become the Digital front-runners in Europe, but perhaps not perhaps also in the world So the the aim is to become the most interconnected region in Europe It's not an objective in itself It is a tool it is a stool it is a tool to strengthen the competitiveness of companies and It is a tool to make the life of people in our region easier So so this is a very very ambitious approach the major areas of cooperation and Our priorities there. I would like to mention cross-border interoperability We have formed a consortium with Finland to develop the Interoperability system what we call x-road together and now also Iceland and the Faroe Islands have Become partners in this consortium We very much hope that all the countries in the Nordic Baltic region can join this consortium so that we could develop the Interoperability system together in the in the in the region secondly the digital IDs All the countries in the region have digital IDs But to to to a quite extent these can be used at the moment only nationally, so the Nordic and Baltic Governments have an ambition that by the end of next year The digital IDs could be mutually recognized and mutually used I just checked a couple of days ago in fact that with my Estonian digital ID I could only enter to the Latvian Latvia dot LV government portal not to any any other system and also not No digital ID from the from this group of countries can be used when the Estonian Government portal at the moment So so or for example fin finish Digital Platform can only backseat it by German digital ID, so this is this is a this is a challenge So in order to foster the cross-border cooperation and the cross-border Accessibility the digital IDs have to be recognized in this region Third area of cooperation is Real-time economy solutions and here we talk about different different Logistical Solutions for for example transport companies Solutions with regard to know your customer Which is a huge issue in today's world and also the E documents like the receipts Then Another area of regional cooperation is 5g Latvia is organizing in November a 5g conference for the Nordic and Baltic Governments, which is a very very important event and Also, there are quite a number of bilateral and sub regional projects They are very much Concentrated on what is specific areas like e help That is a there is a project between Estonia and Finland for example to recognize each other's Digital medical prescriptions Estonia is next year the chair of the Baltic cooperation and also the coordinator of the Nordic and Baltic cooperation One of the Priority issues for us will be the digital Cooperation I noticed that I have what in the time left So next year we will we hope to bring this this agenda further in the framework of our Coordinated coordinator role with regard to the island and Nordic Baltic cooperation we see Island of Nordic Baltic very much as like-minded partners in terms of digital Issues to digital development So we very much welcome further Discussions and further dialogue between the Nordic Baltic and and island in these matters There are different Potential areas what we can discuss More among us The digital single market issues for example is one one of the possibilities, but also We think that the emerging technologies and data economy is is an area where we all have Interest and where we all are quite well developed so we could have More discussion and more dialogue on these issues in the future as well Thank you