Page 91 - The Annual AI Governance Report 2025 Steering the Future of AI

The Annual AI Governance Report 2025: Steering the Future of AI

This wasn’t just about technology – it was about transforming mindsets. This was the foundation
on which we started to build our digital-first society and the start-up ecosystem.

Today, we face a new technology with equally transformative power. So we are taking another
leap. We want to use the experiences from being a pioneer in e-governance to become a
leading implementer of AI.

We are integrating Artificial Intelligence into our public sector and schools – not because it’s
fashionable, but because we believe AI can improve services and create real value for people
– if governed responsibly.

We started this process several years before the popular Large Language Models were released.
By today, Estonia has implemented approximately 200 AI applications across government
institutions – in fields as diverse as education, healthcare, justice, transport, the environment,
and culture.
From virtual assistants to autonomous museum buses, from flood detection systems to learning
tools – AI is helping us build a smarter, more human-centered government and governance.

But this has not always been the case. Even though digitalisation has been in the bloodstream
of our society for decades, having a human centric approach is rather new.

When we first started with our digital transformation, the way to approach digital services was to
increase efficiency among the government, considering the little resources available. Gradually
we shifted our mindset to a human-centric approach, it’s when we slowly started to see the
satisfaction rates of citizens going up.

According to the recent research, there’s a 83% satisfaction rate with the public e-services. And
the aim is to reach 90% of user satisfaction of online public services by 2030. Satisfaction creates
trust, trust is an important social capital to move forward.

Dear Friends,

Estonia have now grounded its digital journey on a human-centric approach, shaped by
infrastructure, responsibility, and education. Let me elaborate on them.
Firstly – infrastructure. Estonia’s digital society is built on a secure and interoperable data
ecosystem, supported by X-Road – that is our decentralized data exchange layer that allows real-
time, cross-institutional data sharing. This system is developed and maintained in partnership
through the Nordic Institute for Interoperability Solutions (NIIS) – a great example of regional
cooperation delivering global impact.
We believe that digital public infrastructure is the silent enabler of AI. It ensures security,
resilience, and trust in every service we build. Such infrastructure provides the foundational
building blocks of the digital society – such as secure digital identity, data exchange, and
payment systems – that ensure resilience, efficiency, and trust across the entire digital ecosystem.

Secondly – responsibility. Innovation without trust is not sustainable. That’s why we are fully
committed to implementing the EU AI Act. We support its risk-based approach, which offers
a global model for responsible regulation – one that protects rights while still encouraging
innovation.

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