Estonia, Innovations, Internet, Technology

"Relying on common solutions in places where there's no point in inventing the wheel twice has been one of the mainstays of the Estonian digital state. This is how X-Road and the digital identity were born, for instance, which made developing e-services many times faster and easier for everyone," Siim Sikkut, deputy secretary general of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications for communications and state information systems said in a press release.

"Now we want to bring the same platform-based approach and acceleration into the field of artificial intelligence, and I'm glad that the first step in that direction has been taken," he said. 

The first base component for AI based solutions added to the source code repository is a text analysis tool created by Texta OU, which has been used by many institutions to date for increasing the effectiveness of their work processes and automatization of routine activities. The Ministry of Education and Research, for instance, uses the tool for the audit of document management aimed at identifying documents which have become public without permission.

The Ministry of Justice in collaboration with the Center of Registers and Information Systems (RIK) removed with Texta personal data from nearly 80,000 judicial decisions involving expunged punishment and made the judicial decisions available in the court information system again.

Sikkut said the aim is to have at least seven such base components available to all parties, including the private sector, by the end of 2020. 

To develop said solution, a new cooperation form was created under the leadership of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications in the form of a technology sandbox for cooperation in IT development between the public and private sectors.

"Not all innovation in the digital state must take place via procurements alone and depend on the wisdom of the state as the contracting authority," Sikkut added.

"With the sandbox framework we open up a possibility for cooperation in development in whose framework a company, a university or an individual developer can create into the already existing digital state a complementary or a completely new solution together with a customer from the state, by which the state will obtain the developed new solution for wider free use. On the back of the reference of Estonia as a developed digital state, the creator of the solution can then move on and sell it all over the world," Sikkut added.

The aim of the source code repository launched in spring 2019 is community-driven development of the e-government and the open source code repository is the cornerstone of this. The source codes deposited in the repository are open to the public unless the opposite is required for security reasons. 

One of the main directions of the Estonian national action plan for the implementation of AI is testing, commissioning and making available by the state of base components of AI based standard applications that would speed up the implementation of AI based solutions.