Europe’s digitalisation priorities

GovTech Europe sits down with Tuuli Pärenson, CEO of GoFore Estonia, to discuss the challenges and solutions for European governments wishing to innovate their digital practices – all based on the firm’s experiences working with the Estonian government.

GOVTECH EUROPE? In Gofore’s experience, what are the biggest challenges to European governments seeking to digitalise?

Tuuli Pärenson: We are an agile full-stack digital transformation consultancy with strong references from both private and public sector. Our aim is to help organisations transform, stay current in the ever-changing environment, and capitalize on new opportunities.

When it comes to digitalisation, we are on a constant journey. It’s a rapidly changing environment, where technologies emerge constantly and where the definition of normal also changes at speed.

We believe that one of the hardest learning curves is not about specific technologies, but about learning the ways of working that are necessary for embracing this constant change.

People who are more familiar with ICT know these methodologies by the keyword ‘agile’. For us, agile means building sustainable human-centred digital solutions together with our customers. In an agile world, this is enormously important. Only together with our customers can we accurately pinpoint what brings most value to the users’ needs.

Together, with an understanding of how this change comes about, we have noticed that there are some similarities between the organisations who have succeeded well in digital transformation. No surprise, these similarities are once again the cornerstones of an agile approach:

  • Firstly, the collaboration model is based on partnerships. Partnerships get polished in time, when work is done together and when the shared understanding is built through discussions and evaluating different options.
  • Secondly, organisations are usually focused on bringing value to their customers. However, we often see that although this sounds easy on paper – in practice, it’s not. We are often tied to the decisions made in the past, but we cannot change the things that have been done. We should, however, be aiming to do better in the future. Here, once again, agile portfolio management can help. Some governments have already implemented service-based budgeting or are on the way to implementing it. If this is done well, then it’s a solid foundation for moving on with digitalisation in an agile way.

Tuuli  Pärenson is the CEO of Gofore Estonia and responsible for international business development in Gofore Group. She has extensive experience with successful digital transformations in the private and public sector and on an international scale. Her special skill is designing and implementing cooperation models that promote co-creation and stakeholder engagement.

GE: What tech solutions should governments be focusing on most to ensure the most efficient digitalisation possible?

TP: We believe that digitalisation should not start from selection of technical solutions. It should start from understanding. In other words, ask yourself: what creates value and how?

When it comes to efficient digitalisation then it is worth having a look at the digital maturity of the organisation. There are many digital maturity models available, and the grounds are mostly the same:

  • Firstly, digital maturity is only partly about technology. A good maturity model must also include aspects of management, organisation culture and cooperation network.
  • Secondly, for quick gains, focus on improving the capabilities, where the maturity is the lowest, not where you are already doing extremely well.

Having said that, there are of course some core functions that are usually needed for building digital services. These are:

  • Identification and authentication of the user
  • Authorisation of the user
  • Accessing data
  • Storing data

GE: How does Gofore’s work in Estonia translate as templates for other European nations? How do you assess the impact of “tech sovereignty” as a barrier to collaboration between European nations?

TP: When it comes to the question of the most efficient way to solve those core needs, there is not a single correct answer.

The Estonian approach has been centrally managed distributed solutions. It means that a government agency assures that there is a technology solution available to tackle those necessary functions. Whenever a public sector organisation builds a digital service and needs those functions, then these are implemented locally using central guidelines and best practices. It is financially efficient because the same functionalities do not need to be developed twice. And of course, when any of those functions could be developed in cooperation with other countries, then it gets even more efficient financially.

But financial efficiency is not the most important factor. I have also mentioned the importance of management, values, and cooperation before as crucial factors of digital maturity? There are diverse cultural and practical reasons as to why a similar approach might not be acceptable elsewhere. Even if there are good solutions out there, ready to be implemented, then core components of digital government might be a question of national pride and therefore need to be custom-made. We have seen very practical issues, where the implementation of core components is postponed, because first there is a need to develop an organisation capable of managing them. Sometimes, it might be politically or culturally unacceptable to force implementation of any centrally managed solution.

For the technical core solution to be effective, it needs to be in good balance:

  • providing a solution that works
  • enforced or at least allowed by legislation
  • supported with best practice that enable easy implementation
  • with assured sustainability

GE: Can you talk briefly about the X-Road project, what motivated it, what it enables for governments, and its future.

TP: X-Road is an open-source software and ecosystem solution that provides unified and secure data exchange between organisations. My history with X-Road goes back in time, when Estonia understood that the X-Road that had been in use for almost 20 years, was no longer sufficient for national needs.

I joined Estonian Information System Authority in 2014 to make sure that X-Road would adapt, and not become a legacy that would hold us back.

In 2014 Estonia had a solution that worked and that was enforced by legislation. All public sector data exchange happened only using X-Road. Why did we need to change anything that worked so well? The easy answer is because the world is constantly changing, and we had to keep up with the change. First, there is more cooperation between private and public sector. It makes sense that private sector has access to some public sector data for specific use-cases, but it must be controlled and monitored. We had two options: will we create a separate interoperability layer for private-public interoperability, or can we use a similar solution for both cases. Secondly, the public sector IT-management had changed. In the past, ministries had their own IT departments who took care of their information systems, but by 2014, most ministries had separated their IT units into distinct organisations. Because of this, data access management roles also needed to be separated.

The other part of the story was that Finland had shown interest in implementing the same solution. This interest helped us to make X-Road better. It gave a distinct perspective and put even more focus on ensuring that we build a flexible solution that fits for diverse cultural set-ups. It made the initiative more sustainable for Estonia’s own use in the future. Meanwhile, Finland’s implementation was not focused on enforcing it on society through legislation, but by making it an attractive, easy solution to use.

Once both countries had implemented the solution, then of course it was a next logical step to agree on how we ensure the supporting technology would be kept up to date.

The easiest way to do this was together, and that is why non-profit organisation Nordic Institute for Interoperability Solutions (NIIS) was established. X-Road technologies sustainability is assured by NIIS, and it is available open-source. Everyone, who is interested in it, can try it out and start using it, without inventing the same solution once again.

And of course, Gofore is one of the X-Road technology partners, who can help you with everything around X-Road or its implementation.

Read on for more information about X-Road and the work of NIIS.

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talk@unimedia.ie