This year’s TDS will focus on delivering trusted connectivity through trusted partnerships

TDS brings together leaders from like-minded and digitally-advanced countries, international organizations, and the private sector to address the most pressing issues of today and tomorrow. Based on the practical experience gained in Estonia and that of likeminded friends, we seek to push the dialogue, partnerships and practical projects towards a more transparent, secure, and accountable future based on values.

The core principle of our approach towards the digital presence and future is trust. Trusting the governments, trusting the technology, trusting the connectivity, be it physical, digital or virtual and trusting eachother. Yet, we see that our road to the digital future, built upon our shared democratic values, has collided with the grim realities of geopolitics and the malign influence of autocracies. Our democracies seek to harness the digital transformation to build a future that is more free, prosperous, and sustainable, whereas autocracies seek to exploit technology to inflict coercion both at home and abroad. In today´s reality, we need to seize the moment and stand decisively as a united front against authoritarianism and for trusted partnerships, based on common interests, democratic values and the highest standards – the very essence of trusted connectivity.

At last year’s Tallinn Digital Summit, Estonia introduced Trusted Connectivity as a shared conceptual framework to consolidate and amplify the many connectivity initiatives of like-minded democracies.  This year’s Summit will focus on delivering trusted connectivity through trusted partnerships. The Summit will build bridges among various connectivity initiatives and elaborate on what constitutes a trusted and secure digital society, as well as on concrete steps for governments, financial institutions, international organizations, technical experts, and the private sector to take to ensure our democratic values, our commitments to human freedom and human dignity, and the rules-based international order prevail.

We will explore the role of trusted connectivity and trusted partnerships across topics such as global stability, supply chains, energy, economic, and cyber security, digital policy, international standards, artificial intelligence, clouds and satellites, digital public goods, and Web 3.0. Important part of our discussion will be how these topics will support the reconstruction of a free and democratic Ukraine.

In order put the ideas into practice, it needs political, institutional and entrepreneurial ecosystems and increased public and private investments in connectivity. And we need trust, an architecture of trust within the international system where plurilateral arrangements, such as transatlancti alliance, G7, the Quad, play a central role in ensuring a democratic, values-based and prosperous future!