Digital Government Podcast

As AI makes cyberattacks faster, cheaper and more widely accessible, how can governments keep essential services running and protect public trust?
In this episode of the Digital Government Podcast, Merle Maigre, Head of Cybersecurity at the eGA, speaks with Madis Tapupere, former CTO of the Estonian Government and now a tech management consultant, about the white paper National Cyber Resilience in the Age of AI: A Doctrine for Asymmetric Cyber Defence.
They explore what a state cannot afford to lose, how AI can help defenders respond at machine speed, and why cyber resilience requires cooperation across government and the private sector. Drawing on Estonia’s experience, the conversation also examines why clear, timely communication during a crisis matters as much as technical recovery. 

Tune in to discover what it takes to keep a digital state functioning and trusted in the age of AI.

At this year's Tallinn Cyber Diplomacy Summer School, one question kept coming up: how can international cyber agreements move beyond diplomatic language and translate into real action?
The question is particularly timely as the United Nations Global Mechanism prepares for its upcoming meeting in New York this July, an important milestone for the permanent UN process on responsible state behaviour in cyberspace.
In this episode of the Digital Government Podcast, recorded during the Summer School, Patryk Pawlak speaks with H.E. Ambassador Egriselda López, Chair of the UN Global Mechanism, about what comes next for cyber diplomacy at the United Nations. 
Together, they discuss how implementation can become more action-oriented, why capacity building is essential for meaningful ownership, and how governments, experts, and technical communities can work together to make the mechanism effective in practice.
Listen to the episode to learn why turning commitments into action matters now more than ever.

The last time Ott Velsberg appeared on this podcast was early 2022. Popular LLMs had not yet been released. The conversation was about how AI could support data-driven decision-making in government – a topic that felt, at the time, more prospective than operational.
Four years on, with Estonia counting over 220 public sector AI use cases and close to 60 million euros in estimated annual impact, the frame has shifted. So, it is now less about what AI in government could look like and more about what it has taken to get there.
In this episode of the Digital Government Podcast, Ott Velsberg, outgoing Chief Data Officer of the Estonian government and responsible for Estonia's AI policy, tells us about the path from strategy to working infrastructure. And the long institutional work that makes it possible to coexist with both consent-based data sharing and AI adoption at scale.

When governments across Europe try to modernise, the challenge is rarely that they lack ambition or resources. More often, what is missing is the space to think carefully before acting – to understand what the actual problem is, what has already been tried elsewhere, and who inside the administration will need to carry the change forward.
The European Union’s Technical Support Instrument (TSI) was built around exactly that gap: not funding, but structured expert support, delivered at the moment when a reform is still being designed.
In this episode of the Digital Government Podcast, recorded around Europe Day, we speak with Florian Hauser, Deputy Head of Unit for Public Administration at SG REFORM – the European Commission’s Task Force for reforms and investment – and with Hannes Astok, Executive Director of the e-Governance Academy (eGA), which has been working closely with the TSI across a growing portfolio of themes in recent years.
Explore the European Union’s approach to reform support and what it actually takes to make them work. Tune in!

Thirty years ago, Estonia launched Tiger Leap, a programme that put computers and internet in every school and, in many ways, laid the groundwork for a digital society what we have known to call e-Estonia. Today, the country is attempting something just as ambitious with artificial intelligence (AI) in education. But the conditions are different this time. 
When Tiger Leap started in 1996, neither the schools nor the students had the technology – everybody had to learn together. Now, the asymmetry runs the other way: the students have leaped, while the education system is catching up.
In this episode of the Digital Government Podcast, Ivo Visak, CEO of AI Leap (TI-Hüpe), the national programme integrating artificial intelligence into Estonian high schools, Visak makes the case for why treating AI in schools as an intervention rather than an experiment is the only responsible path forward.
Tune in to explore the Estonian path in implementing AI in education!