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President Ilves to chair World Bank’s World Development Report advisory panel and give a number of presentations

16.04.2015

President Toomas Hendrik Ilves, will today fly to the United States of America on a work visit, where he will co-chair the World Bank's World Development Report advisory panel, which is meeting to discuss the preparation of the World Bank's most influential report next year, Internet for Development.

The World Development Report, entitled Internet for Development, is being prepared under the joint leadership of President Ilves and the Chief Economist of the World Bank, Kaushik Basu, and will cover both the private and public sector. The report analyses trends and gives examples from different countries, including e-services available in Estonia, thereby serving to introduce our technical solutions in general, such as secure online-identity and X-road, which provide the foundation for Estonia's democracy and transparency.

President Ilves has said previously that openness to technology and innovation have the potential to become key to the development of countries, as the experience of Estonia has demonstrated. In particular, he has described the opportunity to co-chair the World Bank's World Development Report advisory panel as a chance to introduce the solutions and ways of thinking offered by Estonia.

While in Washington, the Estonian Head of State will visit the influential think tank, Atlantic Council, and give a presentation at a closed working lunch at the Center of European Policy Analysis (CEPA) on studying Central and Eastern Europe in order to introduce the drastically changed security situation in the Baltic region. Since last December, President Ilves has also been a part of the international advisory council of the CEPA, which includes the Pulitzer award winner, Anne Applebaum; former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Sweden, Carl Bildt; Professor of European Studies at Oxford University, Timothy Garton Ash; and many other influential shapers or thinkers in international foreign and security policy issues.

President Ilves also has a presentation scheduled for the 11th conference of the Joint Baltic American National Committee (JBANC).

He will also take the floor at the Wilson Center, a think tank ranked among the top ten in the world, and use the example of Estonia to demonstrate the effect of a free and secure Internet on the economic progress of a country. He will meet with some influential US Congress members there.

President Ilves will depart from Washington on Tuesday, 21 April.


Office of the President
Public Relations Department