Tallinn Digital Summit

The Tallinn Digital Summit 2023 took place on 05 September at the Tallinn Creative Hub, both on-site and digitally. The event was organised by Prime Minister Kaja Kallas with the participation of the Ministry of Economy and Communications, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Government Office of Estonia. Under the motto “Refreshing the agenda of democracy and technology”, the aim of the summit was to facilitate an exchange between leading actors in the digital world on the opportunities and challenges of digitalisation for resilient, responsive and open governance. In total, representatives from over 70 countries – including eight heads of state and government as well as EU Commissioner Thierry Breton – took part. A special focus was on the digital transformation of the public sector and the potential of digital public infrastructure (DPI) and goods (DPG), involving business, academia and civil society. Against this background, the Tallinn Digital Summit was a key forum and partner meeting for the GovStack initiative in particular. The BMZ and German development cooperation were represented in three sessions and eight bilateral and multilateral meetings on site.

Katharina Mänz, Deputy Head of the Digitalisation Unit at BMZ, moderated the GovStack Side Event Panel “Global momentum fpr DPI and DPG in digital cooperation”, which presented the current era of growing interest in digital public infrastructure and digital public goods. Christopher Burns, Chief Digital Development Officer and Director for Technology, USAID and Hoa-Binh Adjemian, Deputy Head of Unit – “An economy that works for people, green, digital and connected”, DG NEAR participated.

Following the panel, the first cohort of the GovStack Women in GovTech Challenge was welcomed. For this feminist digital policy joint action, 215 women from digital government worldwide have applied to participate since the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) 2023. The best projects will be presented at WSIS 2024.

Katharina Mänz presented the initiative together with Nele Leosk, Assistant Ambassador for Digital Affairs, Estonian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Doreen Bogdan-Martin (ITU).

The panel was moderated by Yolanda Martinez (ITU).