Kallas: Ukraine can move towards digitalization at a faster pace than Estonia once did

"Estonia now has about 5,000 e-services in the public and private sectors, including e-voting, e-schools, e-hubs, we have digital signatures. All this saves Estonia a lot of time and money. And trees,” Prime Minister of Estonia Kaja Kallas said at the All-Ukrainian Forum "Ukraine 30. Digitalization", an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

She stressed that the implementation of "digital solutions" in her country had produced even greater results than expected, for example, saving 2% of GDP, "and this is what Estonia spends on defense every year."

At the same time, the Prime Minister of Estonia stressed that the effect in Ukraine could be even greater, given its much larger population and big distances. As noted, "it takes much time for the paper to travel" and a digital signature is put instantly at any distance, "if we talk about forgery of signatures, it is harder to do this online than on paper."

"I know that Mr. [Deputy Prime Minister - Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine Mykhailo] Fedorov is working on the introduction of electronic documents in the government. As a result, greater efficiency can be achieved by accelerating e-document flow in a large country," Kallas stressed.

According to her, Estonia occupies a leading position in the movement of capital in "technology companies", the country has unique know-how solutions. In general, Estonia can be a partner with both the government and technology companies in Ukraine. "We all work together here. And we are sure that we also have something to learn from Ukraine," said the Prime Minister of Estonia.

At the same time, she believes, Ukraine has a chance to move towards digitalization at a faster pace, skipping some stages of development that Estonia once went through, and "just to get faster into the future " which will have  a "mobile approach to life." Kaja Kallas also expressed hope that, among other things, Ukraine will introduce e-voting.

ol