Friday 21st April 2023
The Papua New Guinea Department of Information and Communications Technology received a visit today from Her Excellency Ms Kersti Eesmaa, the Estonian Ambassador to Australia and the Pacific, along with the European Union Ambassador to PNG, His Excellency Jacques Fradin. The purpose of the visit was to discuss Papua New Guinea’s digital government agenda, which is inspired by Estonia’s success in becoming one of the top digital societies in the world.
As the mandated department responsible for transforming the ICT sector of Papua New Guinea in a whole-of-government approach, partnering with Estonia is a significant step towards digitization. The DICT has already established prior partnerships with Estonian institutions and vendors to achieve digitization.
To further enhance this collaboration, the European Union Delegation in Papua New Guinea is facilitating a twinning program that would enable Papua New Guinea to learn from the experiences and best practices of an experienced EU member state’s ICT agency. This program aims to build institutional capacity within the Papua New Guinea government to lead the development of a comprehensive digital society across all government functions.
The partnership has already seen the DICT’s technical team seek guidance from the e-Governance Academy (eGA) and partner with Cybernetica to develop a secure data exchange system. The Minister for Information and Communications Technology, Hon. Timothy Masiu, expressed his gratitude for the visit by the Estonian Ambassador and looks forward to working closely with Estonia in the future.
The Minister also reiterated Papua New Guinea’s commitment to continuous efforts through the resident European Union Delegation on further technical and capacity building initiatives.