Update April 2000: Estonia

The major events during the period from January to March 2000 (included) were the Government’s approval of public policy documents, birth of several new organisations and increasing activities of venture capital funds. With the last activity broader discussion arose in society about the innovative projects in the field of information technology and assessment of their output. Further information on these matters can be found at corresponding ESIS II Database of Activities.

1. Awareness increasing events (workshops, www-services, information exchange)

The most important conference organised by public sector was the international conference on Baltic registers Regno 2000 on 13-14 March. It dealt with management of state database systems and developmental trends in the Baltic region. The conference was organised by the Estonian State Chancellery and the Finnish Centre for Population Register.

Another international conference "Information Society in the Baltics" was held on 2-3 February 2000, discussing the general developments in the Baltic region. Also several Estonian high-level experts participated in the conference with their presentations.

As the clientele (persons with ability to pay and who use information technology) supporting the successful development of E-commerce has continued to increase, several important seminars on development of E-commerce and copyright issues were held:

• on 3 March regular Baltic Marketing Conference "Market Intelligence" on E-commerce and linking issues took place;
• DELFI Online and PriceWaterhouseCoopers organised a seminar on E-commerce "Net Profit: Where is the Money in E-Commerce?" on 9 March;
• The Association of Estonian Newspapers (AEN) arranged on 20 March in Tallinn a seminar on copyright; according to AEN there is a massive misuse of newspaper information in the Internet in Estonia.

Two international information and communication technology fairs will take place in April contributing to promoting general awareness in information society:

• Information and communication technology fair CONTACT 2000 primarily for specialists;
• International fair Infocom 2000 for general public.

As the Internet has become quite popular several organisations have entered the market with new projects of services via the Internet (birth of these www-services has not been reflected in events’ database):

• Marketplace B2Boffer.com was founded in March to mediate legal persons’ search for goods or services to the suppliers of such goods and services
• B2B environment Logistic2000.com for transport firms was established in March to facilitate the everyday co-operation between transport organisers (expeditors/logisticians) and carrier transport companies
• in March banks started to offer their Internet clients an opportunity to fill out and present their personal income-tax return of 1999 to the Revenue Office electronically.

2. State Information Society Policy

The Telecommunications Act (Telekommunikatsiooniseadus) and Digital Signatures Act (Digitaalallkirja seadus) were the most significant legislative acts of the period.

The Government approved also several other general political documents.

In March the Government Coalition announced refusal of turnover tax exemption from IT goods, as contradicting to EU Directives. Thus, the provision of the item in the coalition agreement signed on 17 March 1999 on cutting the turnover tax for home consumers and educational organisations when obtaining information technology and software was withdrawn.

In January the Government of the Republic of Estonia adopted the detailed action plan for accession wth EU (National Plan for the Adoption of the Acquis). Among others the following topics are included in chapter 8: information society, education, scientific research and technological development, telecommunication and audio-visual services.

3. Formation of Expert Groups and Professional Associations

In January the Ministry of Economic Affairs, the Chamber of Trade and Industry and the Confederation of Employers and Industry initiated the establishment of non-profit organisation Estonian Standardisation Centre.

In March the Government of the Republic of Estonia passed the decision to establish the Estonian Information Technology Foundation. The foundation will start immediately to organise the foundation of the Information Technology College and launching its activities. The decision on establishing the College was included also in the Coalition Agreement. Other founders beside the State are the University of Tartu, the Tallinn Technical University, Estonian Telecom and the Association of Estonian Computer Companies.

The Union of Estonian Information Technology and Telecommunication Companies was established in March, uniting 40 companies in the field of information technology and telecommunication. Until that time Estonian market lacked this type of influential umbrella organisation.

4. Calls for proposals

In January the Foundation Tartu University Clinics and the Open Estonian Foundation published a call for proposals to extend the use of the Internet in medical institutions. The purpose of the contest is to improve the quality of medical services by an extended utilisation of the means of information technology.

The Open Estonian Foundation published another call for projects in January, related to co-operation programme of open societiy supporting foundations -- East-East for intensifying the co-operation between the organisations and specialists of Central and Eastern Europe. Free media and information exchange are also listed among the expected topics.

The Estonia’s bigger investment banks (including LHV and Trigon Capital) have started aggressive campaign to investi to information technology projects. Trigon Capital announced to mediating of 3 million dollars to the E-trade Company Ozon located in St. Petersburg and acquiring 25 per cent of the shares of Estonian company Helmes Ltd. The risk capital fund New Economy Ventures (NEV) administered by the investment bank Lõhmus, Haavel & Viisemann (LHV) invested in CV-Online offering personnel services.

Signing contracts to obtain software for public administration organisations continued. The Estonian Centre of Informatics and Baltic Computer Systems Ltd. signed the contract for supplying the Estonian state institutions with Microsoft’s software according to the public procurement from the end of 1999. The frame contract between the Estonian Informatics Centre and the software company Sybase Baltic OY was signed in March and according to that the Estonian state institutions can obtain Sybase’s products on favourable conditions.

5. Surveys

EMOR published the results of a latest survey reflecting that during the last six months 25 per cent of the population of Estonia has used the Internet. 42 per cent of the Estonian population aged from 15 to 74 has been using the computer at least once, 28 per cent of them have done that during the week preceding the survey.

The Estonian Informatics Centre in co-operation with the Estonian State Chancery published a regular yearbook "Information Technology in Public Administration, 1999". The collection, published since 1996 is a valuable source of information for making decisions affecting this field.

The present survey has been compiled based on the materials of news agencies BNS and ETA as well as the business newspaper ajaleht "Äripäev" and on opinions expressed by various experts.

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