Digital Government Podcast

Governments are racing to adopt AI in public services. EU-funded projects show the pace is only accelerating. But this push raises a deeper question: what lies beneath? Too often, the answer is the same – weak or uneven digital foundations.
Digital public infrastructure (DPI) can help integrate and connect siloed systems into a coherent digital government platform. So, where does it stand globally, as an enabler of AI development? What makes it work? And why does it matter more than ever for AI adoption? We explored these questions on this episode of the Digital Government Podcast with Krisstina Rao, now at Co-Develop, and outgoing Research Fellow at the Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose at University College London (UCL), where she led the work on the Digital Public Infrastructure Map.
Listen now and explore what’s really powering AI-enabled public services behind the scenes!

This podcast and podcast blog were produced within the project “EU Commission Project (24ES06/24DE33): Supporting regional entrepreneurship through the adoption of innovative technologies, including AI, in public services” with the financial assistance of the European Union via the Technical Support Instrument. The views expressed by the speakers in the project video are their own and do not necessarily reflect the official opinion of the European Union.

Leadership in the public sector has always demanded resilience. This is best exemplified by three elements: 1) the ability to hold long-term vision steady while reacting to short-term pressures, 2) to build consensus across institutions that do not naturally cooperate, and 3) to keep an organisation moving when the ground shifts beneath it. Digital transformation has sharpened all of these demands. The leaders steering this process need more than technical knowledge. They need self-awareness, the capacity to build the team and trust it, and the judgment to know when a crisis is also an opportunity.
In this episode of the Digital Government Podcast, hosted by Merle Maigre, Head of Cybersecurity at e-Governance Academy, we hear from Taimar Peterkop – former State Secretary of Estonia, former Director General of the Information System Authority, and now Senior Expert at the e-Governance Academy. Drawing on over two decades at some of Estonia's most consequential institutions, Peterkop shares practical wisdom on what it takes to lead through change and crisis – with honesty and without pretending to have all the answers.
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Following Estonia’s example, Ukraine is launching a Personal Data Access Monitoring Subsystem embedded in Trembita, the government’s secure data exchange platform. The mechanism allows every Ukrainian to see who accessed their personal data stored in government registers.
In this episode we host Yurii Kopytin, Senior Expert at the e-Governance Academy, and Hannes Astok, our Executive Director, about what transparency means in practice in Ukraine and, on the side, in Estonia too. 
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The topic of data protection spans the entire spectrum of the internet, from when users surf the web to when they benefit from efficient online services as citizens.
Cookie banners, privacy policies, GDPR compliance notices – all and more. And yet, for how practical the concept and its implications are, it still remains quite abstract for many. The rules exist, across the globe, actually, but the reality of what happens to your data most often stays invisible.
Estonia has taken a different approach. Through the Data Tracker, every Estonian citizen can log in and clearly see who has accessed their personal data in government registers, when it was accessed, and for what purpose.
In this episode of the Digital Government Podcast, we speak with Maarja Kirss, Head of Cooperation at the Estonian Data Protection Inspectorate (DPI), about what happens when transparency becomes a working system for the government.
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We sit down with Eeva Hellström, Senior Lead in Foresight and Training at the Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra, to explore one of today’s most urgent questions: how do we value what we cannot see?

Eeva explains why traditional economic models overlook the “invisible” factors that increasingly shape our economies. And why failing to recognise them leaves policymakers with critical blind spots.

We discuss:
✅ Why digital transformation shouldn’t be measured only by short-term ROI.
✅ The environmental and social costs of we rarely consider.
✅ What “post-growth” means for high-income countries.
✅ Why governments need new indicators of well-being and long-term public value.

Tune in!