Taavi Kotka, ex-CIO of Estonia

“That’s the problem of under-structured countries - you think that this (personal ID) is a secret number. It’s not - it’s my digital name.”
— Taavi Kotka

This week on CUTalks, we are speaking to Taavi Kotka, an entrepreneur and the first CIO of the Estonian government. He started his career as a programmer and became the CEO of Webmedia (now Nortal), the region's largest software company before working with the government and is now back in the private sector, helping start-ups develop and consulting on digital transformation.
We spoke about the process of the digital transformation of Estonia, the challenges faced during it and how other countries might follow suit.

This podcast was produced by Carl Homer, Cambridge TV.

Jump to the following topics:

  1. How did the e-Estonia project start - 1:36

  2. Was it a smooth ride? - 6:37

  3. The technology behind the mission - 9:53

  4. How to get government departments to all use one unique id instead of building own indexes - 22:02

  5. Parallels between traceable single ids and blockchain - 26:10

  6. Why haven't more countries used a centralised data model - 27:08

  7. How were citizens convinced to adopt technology - 31:56

  8. What is an e-resident + the plan to have 10 million of them to become the most populous Nordic country - 39:00

  9. When will India have 100% internet users and how to build similar number of unicorns per capita to Estonia - 55:33

  10. How patents were managed in Estonia + new innovations in Estonia - 57:29

  11. Advice for private GovTech firms who want to work with public sector - 1:02:06

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