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News in pictures: President Ilves introduced Estonia’s e-success story in San Francisco
25.09.2015
The President, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, took part in the CloudFlare Internet Summit in San Francisco, USA, where he introduced Estonia's e-success story to information technology experts and discussed the future of e-society with Matthew Prince, the CEO and one of the founders of CloudFlare.
"Estonian society can boast excellent IT literacy, and this is largely due to the Tiger Leap programme, which involved providing schools with internet in the 1990s. In addition, thousands of young people were inspired by the success of their peers in the IT sphere, such as the success story of Skype. We have grown used to thinking big in an information technology sense," said President Ilves.
"Unfortunately, we also have a problem – many European countries either lag behind in this sphere or do not deem it important enough to make the contributions that are required of the modern era. Europe in general would benefit from the establishment of a cross-border network of e-services, and this would also enhance everyone's economic competitiveness. The free movement of e-services works very well in the USA but, regrettably, not in Europe; therefore, we are unable to compete with the US in this sphere," the Estonian Head of State added.
He also gave a brief overview of the idea of e-residency and co-operation between the pubic and private sectors in Estonia for the purposes of the provision of e-services.
At the top summit, the possible development trends over the next five years in the information technology sector were discussed, complete with the possible effects of the developments on journalism, business and governance. Representatives of start-up companies, academicians, IT sector representatives and journalists were present among the 300 participants.
Office of the President
Public Relations Department
