2. Partnerships on human capital development for the information society Linnar Viik Associate Professor Estonia Geneva, February 25, 2003 Joint UNECE/UNDP Round Table “Overcoming Obstacles to the Development of Information Society: A Busines Solution”

3. Outputs of the PPP at present 160.000 electronic ID cards distributed 56.000 people passed free IT training 2.500 ECDL issued 4% of Internet users access only via PIAP 15% of Internet users access sometimes via PIAP 60% of WLAN users hooked to free access points 80% of tax declarations via banks secure internet portals

4. Preconditions for partnership Shared vision and goals among the partners Understanding the motivation and incentives of the partners Concrete, measureable objectives Ongoing open discussion among the partners

5. Why partnership in this field? Connected society is shared goal of both government and private sector To connect the society you need –Access –Knowledge –Services –Trust They all are the ideal subjects of partnership

6. Look@World initiative In 2001 major finance, telecom and IT companies in Estonia started foundation with aims to support the continuous growth of Internet penetration Their investment is comparable to annual government ICT budget New dimension in private-public partnership Strong human capital development component

7. Access to Internet Internet access points have been always established as partnerhips of government agency or municipality with –UNDP –OSI –Private companies –Look@World foundation There is also need for competitive and liberalized telecommunicatons market Countrywide WLAN/WiFi free Internet access points as new access form

8. Trust - access to digital security Digital signature and ID cards established and rolled out as partnership Government holds register of authentication and certificate providers Government holds also the standard The rest of the infrastructure and applications are privately owned and operated User utilites and training programmes by private companies Service development incentives by private companies

9. Training ECDL partnership programme –Estonian Informatics Association Vocational education programmes designed with employees –Estonian IT Foundation (government, universities and private companies) as operator of the IT College and government IT in higher education programme 100K training programme by Look@World –Bold aim to give free basic IT literacy for 100.000 people within 1 year (employment market size 600.00)

10. Lessons learned Value the scarcest resource – private initiative for public good Listen to and seek for the best competences Share the vision and goals and build partnership coalitions Transparency is best tool to avoid corruption and shady objectives Encourage and admire the voluntary work