Estonian president: E-state could find a way to distribute energy crisis subsidies

  • 2022-01-07
  • BNS/TBT Staff

TALLINN – During his visit to the Information System Authority (RIA) on Thursday, Estonian President Alar Karis noted that the system of the e-state offers enough flexible solutions to the public authorities to help people affected by energy price pressures to submit applications.

"In the 20 years that the ID card and digital signature have been in use in Estonia, the state has come to the point where it can flexibly decide, on the basis of comprehensive databases, when to provide support to people who need it, without them having to submit applications, which creates an unnecessary administrative burden," Karis said.

During the meeting with the management of RIA, the head of state was briefed on the opportunities as well as the dangers related to modern state digital services that the RIA has to deal with on a daily basis.

"The efficient e-Estonia has firmly relied on four pillars. These are electronic identity, the infrastructure of the state network and the X-Road ensuring secure data exchange, and consistent advocacy for cyber security. But alongside them, the trust of the people and also the courage of the executive branch are important," Karis added.

"A unified approach in the public sector would help increase the level of cybersecurity in Estonia. Thus, some IT investments could be related to cybersecurity," the head of state said during the discussion on cybersecurity.

Karis added that cybersecurity is a growing global problem, which is why Estonia, as an elected member of the UN Security Council, for the first time brought the issue to the Security Council's agenda. 

RIA ensures secure data exchange between Estonian state agencies, the use of electronic identity, monitors the operation and protection of the internet network.

One of the milestones of RIA's activities was the October 2021 local elections, when, unlike in the past, the work of polling divisions was also organized digitally and it was necessary to ensure the secure storage of election data in different data centers.

The distributed and decentralized X-Road environment managed by RIA is associated with five thousand different services. A total of 1.5 million authentications are performed and digital signatures created in this environment every day.