Estonia’s Minister of Economic Affairs and Information Technology Tiit Riisalo has lauded India’s IT revolution and said that his country sees India as a “powerful IT centre and one of the centres of gravity”.
Speaking to our diplomatic correspondent Sidhant Sibal, he pointed to his country’s digital identification ID and India’s Aadhar. The minister who is also the Minister of Economic Affairs pointed to how “countries like India are instrumentally important for Estonia…countries who share the same values, the same basic values and in this context, I mainly mean you know, rule of law, democracies need to stick together”. The minister is in India to attend the ‘Vibrant Gujarat Summit’.
Here are the excerpts of the exclusive interview.
Sidhant Sibal: What will be the key focus of your India visit?
Tiit Riisalo: Yes, of course. If you look a little bit into the broader picture, the relations with countries like India are instrumentally important for Estonia, because if you look around ourselves in a in a global context, we understand very well that the countries who share the same values, the same basic values and in this context, I mainly mean you know, rule of law, democracies need to stick together and work together and communicate. And for this, not only you know reading what happens in the newspapers or even having the zoom or web conferences is not enough, you need human contact. And that’s why we had to deepen this mutual understanding. And we certainly find India, in the coming years one of the major global players who shares our values so of course, we want to have good, good working relationships, diplomatically, economy wise, but also as a minister of economy, I represent delegation of the Estonian companies and as a small export oriented country, Estonia is very happy to scale our businesses outside Estonia and outside EU and we hope also Indian companies take interest in in Estonia. Our market size as a Republic of Estonia is not that big, but we are a member of the EU, one of the outstanding members of the EU and its market of 500 million people. So we hope also from the Indian side to create interest to invest in our region.
Sidhant Sibal: How is India’s IT revolution?
Tiit Riisalo: Estonia is a well known digital society. We made our first moves already in the end of the 90s. And we are well recognized worldwide, especially now for the efficiency of digital government. But we understand very well that just by admiring yourself in the changing world, you don’t reach too far. And we definitely see India’s powerful IT centre and one of the centres of gravity in this context. And from one side we are happy to share how we experience but from the other side to learn what is happening in Estonia. And again, it’s also interesting for our IT companies because in IT, it’s even better. You know it is much easier to scale up. And so we hope that that we find new ideas here, that India find something useful or Indian company in Estonia, but also vice versa, that that we can, maybe work mutually together in some sort of solution using then both experiences and one thing we certainly share and that most countries don’t cross yet very well, I must admit is the importance of strong, singular digital identity, which opens, you know, public services which opens business opportunities, and I think definitely we will find mutual interest
Sidhant Sibal: When it comes to IT space. You have been training Indian officials if you can elaborate on that. And I believe you have with India unique cyber exercises, if you can elaborate on that as well.
Tiit Riisalo: This you know, educating of the public sector of course, is something we have to share with the world and, and we have been doing this this for years, because we believe that this shared experience based on open source software, where India has also now taken a lead which we have been preaching already for years. It’s an instrumental cornerstone of democracies so that we actually make the public services not that expensive, easy to develop based on platforms, and that makes it accessible to people. You know, in public sector services, but also business wise. So we are very like minded here and certainly this is, this is also where we have shared our experience also together with our European partners. We have done some training courses which are still going on actually to sort of educate mainly the state employees, but we also look further because we need digital literacy also among you know our populations, otherwise there is no point to develop the digital services. So what concerns cyber, then we are there also I must admit, standing pretty strong on the global level. And it all started for fortunately or unfortunately, with a nuance that Estonia was target of the first major cyber attack in 2007, made to buy by unfortunately our neighbour Russia, but from there on we had to technological basis, but I think we were the first ones to recognize what importance cyber security has in the world which is actually connected to the complete IoT or internet of things. And we see it on a daily basis. And yes, we have a good working relationship and in Estonian case, we always work together with private companies because we just don’t have enough people. You know, to hire everybody and in the public sector. So we work together with the private sector and the private sector has also more motivation to develop the services.
Sidhant Sibal: You mentioned the unique identification. When it comes to India. If you can elaborate I mean, are you looking at some kind of Indian model?
Tiit Riisalo: We both use that. We have the system in place already from the beginning of the 2000s. It’s electronic identity and you can add the first one it started with you know, the ID card and the chip on it. And then there was you know, messaging based and now it is smartphone based and I think it’s developing in the Indian case you use this Aadhaar system, I think so, these are basically doing the same function in a little bit different ways. But, why is it important that this you know, opens secure services, makes it possible to offer secure services. And this is something that we share the understanding, which enables us to work together to advance this sphere.
