On October 15 and 16, Riga hosted the first forum of Baltic digital development agencies, GovTech@Baltic, which was attended by 70 ICT professionals, including representatives from Baltic digital development agencies. At the forum, professionals exchanged experiences and solutions for digital development projects relevant to each country. As a result of the forum, participants have already agreed on the next steps for closer cooperation on complex ICT projects, and a joint meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, October 22.
The Baltic Digital Development Agency Forum is an initiative of the State Digital Development Agency to strengthen cooperation between the Baltic countries, exchange experience and knowledge among the digital agencies of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, and develop successful cooperation with the private sector. Next year, the forum will take place in Lithuania and will be organized by the Lithuanian State Digital Solutions Agency.
The first forum concluded with an agreement on closer cooperation between all countries to exchange experience, ideas and opinions on how to implement large-scale ICT solutions more successfully, quickly and effectively on a daily basis. Therefore, the next step following the forum is scheduled for this week – on Wednesday, October 22, a remote meeting of the digital agencies of all Baltic countries is planned to discuss issues related to the implementation of the digital wallet.
We are pleased that the agencies of our neighboring countries not only supported the idea of the forum, but also see the need to work together on the implementation of ambitious ICT projects, as no one has a ready-made "recipe" for how best to achieve both the goals of the government's digitalization policy and the needs of citizens for convenient digital solutions. The forum also showed that each country is at different stages of implementation of one of the major ICT solution projects, so we can be a significant support and advisor to each other. Our cooperation is very practically oriented – we focus on solutions, software, and security management. In the talks planned for this week, we will focus on current challenges and possible solutions," says Valdis Pusvācietis, Acting Director of the State Digital Development Agency.
The forum in Latvia was organized in close cooperation with the State Administration School, which not only provided the necessary funding for the two-day event, but also carried out the organizational work for the forum as part of the "Digital Academy" project, which is financed by the EU Recovery Fund project No. 2.3.2.2.i.0/1/23/I/VARAM/001 "Digital Academy for Public Administration."
We are very grateful to the State Administration School for believing in the idea of the forum, its usefulness and the contribution that such a high-level meeting of ICT solution specialists makes not only to the development of Latvian public administration digitization projects, but also in the introduction of citizen-friendly digital solutions and e-services," emphasizes Agnese Tkačenko, Cooperation Project Manager at the State Digital Development Agency.