Prime Minister Babiš and the Estonian Prime Minister Ratas discussed digitization

On Friday, 23 November 2018, Prime Minister Andrej Babiš met in Kramář’s Villa with Estonian Prime Minister Jüri Ratas. They discussed Czech-Estonian relations, digital agenda, security, cooperation in science and education as well as European issues. On the occasion of Prime Minister Ratas's visit in the Czech Republic, the Czech-Estonian conference Digital Czech 2018+ was held on Friday, focusing on the possibilities of mutual cooperation and experience sharing in the field of digitization and eGovernment.

According to Prime Minister Babiš, the Czech Republic is interested in further intensifying the cooperation and exchange of experience with Estonia, particularly in the field of digitization and science and research. He also presented to the Estonian Prime Minister the new government strategy “Digital Czech Republic” and the government’s priorities in advancing eGovernment.

“We are countries of similar size, we face similar challenges and often share identical or very similar positions in the European Union or NATO. We want to further cooperate on cyber security. We have confirmed mutual interest in deepening cooperation in digitization and I am very glad that we are jointly organizing a conference on digitization today”, said Prime Minister Andrej Babiš.

The prime ministers also discussed the cooperation of the Visegrad Group with the Nordic and Baltic countries and European issues, especially the future EU budget.

Subsequently, Estonian Prime Minister Jüri Ratas and Minister of Industry and Trade Marta Nováková jointly opened the conference “Digital Czechia 2018+” in the Žižkov Television Tower.

The main topic of the conference was the mutual exchange of experience, ideas and solutions for digitization problems. During the discussion, other important issues related to digitization were addressed, namely the survey of customer satisfaction in the provision of on-line services, cyber security education or the issue of “open data”.

Together with Prime Minister Ratas and Government Representative Dzurilla, the conference included a presentation by the Estonian national digital consultant Marten Kaevats, who introduced “Digital Estonia”. In the end, Siima Sikkut, the Estonian Government IT Representative, gave a speech on cyber security strategy.