NEWS
Estonia offers digital service delivery lessons to Germany as Europe grapples with digital ID adoption
Since leaving his position as Estonian government CIO and Undersecretary for Digital Transformation, Ilves has been working as an advisor to the Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine. In May, he also authored a paper comparing Germany’ s efforts to digitise public administration to those made by Baltic countries such as Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
In all three countries, governments have chosen to centrally organise and fund their digitalization efforts, allowing a high degree of coherence between silos.
“ Core platforms for identity, data sharing and a central government services portal are operated by a digital government agency,” said the report.
“ Over time, these core platforms have offered a growing set of functionalities that reduce the cost to individual agencies of building new services, particularly useful for smaller public bodies with fewer resources and capacity.”
Former Estonian government CIO, Luukas Ilves, has highlighted Estonia’ s advanced digital service delivery model as a valuable lesson for Germany, where digital ID adoption remains significantly lower.
While 90 % of Estonians use their national electronic identity for government services, fewer than 10 % of Germans do so. Ilves, now an advisor to Ukraine’ s Deputy Prime Minister, suggested that Germany could boost e-ID usage by extending its platforms to private and non-profit sectors, enabling everyday transactions.
Meta rejects voluntary EU AI safety guidelines, citing legal uncertainties
In a significant development for European tech leadership, Meta has announced its refusal to sign the European Commission’ s voluntary Code of Practice for General-Purpose AI( GPAI) models.
Joel Kaplan, Meta’ s Chief Global Affairs Officer, stated via LinkedIn that the company believes the code introduces excessive legal uncertainties for model developers and goes beyond the scope of the existing EU AI Act. The stance is particularly notable as Meta continues to face scrutiny in the EU over data privacy and antitrust issues, including recent substantial fines. The decision highlights ongoing tensions between large US tech firms and European regulators regarding the implementation and scope of AI governance, with some European businesses also expressing concerns that current EU AI regulations might stifle innovation compared to less regulated markets.
“ Europe is heading down the wrong path on AI,” said Kaplan.“ We have carefully reviewed the European Commission’ s Code of Practice for general-purpose AI( GPAI) models and Meta won’ t be signing it. This Code introduces a number of legal uncertainties for model developers, as well as measures which go far beyond the scope of the AI Act.”
“ We share concerns raised by these businesses that this over-reach will throttle the development and deployment of frontier AI models in
Europe and stunt European companies looking to build businesses on top of them,” said Kaplan. p
12 INTELLIGENTCIO EUROPE www. intelligentcio. com