“The work we do, in the end, impacts the efficiency of public administration and the services that citizens receive. It’s a big responsibility and we don’t take that lightly.”
If you had to explain what your team does to someone at a dinner party, what would you say?
I would say what we do at our core is help build and improve public services. This does two things:
- helps governments operate more efficiently
- improves the citizen experience
We see how well this has worked in Estonia with the e-Estonia success story, of which Cybernetica has been a key part. And we continue to have that same goal, but with bigger ambitions — to take it global 😊
If the team gets everything right over the next few years, what changes – for your clients, your industry, or the way data exchange works?
I’ve worked in public administration in Canada, and now I’ve had the chance to work with different governments all over the world.
In my view, it would be great to see the digital solutions and conveniences that citizens have in Estonia be available to citizens all over the world.
No more having to queue to renew your driver’s license. No more having to carry your files from one government office to another. No more hoping the pharmacist can read what the doctor has scribbled — and that you get the right prescription at the pharmacy. Let’s get the data moving between the organisations so that the people don’t have to!
And this isn’t some far-fetched futuristic vision. We have expertise here in Cybernetica on how to do that based on years of actual experience with implementation.
Governments are facing cybersecurity threats and have fragmented IT landscapes. It would be great if over the next few years, we could help these governments build their digital ecosystems using our proven technology.
People always talk about the benefits of interoperability. But what does interoperability actually mean?
I think the simplest explanation is that it’s basically about being able to work together despite differences. That sounds a bit philosophical, but when you implement interoperability, you’re setting up an environment that is going to allow organisations to work together.
For example, when you travel, you might bring your laptop with you, but the charger you use here at home might not work where you’re travelling. In that case, you pick up an adapter and voila, you can now use your laptop in a different place. The adapter is kind of acting like an interoperability layer.
Or take this interview as a more relatable example. I speak Tamil, you speak Estonian, but we're able to communicate because we both speak English. English is acting as the interoperability layer that allows us to communicate.
I work in Cybernetica's Data Exchange Technologies Department, which is focused on this topic of interoperability. If we look at it from a more technical view, our interoperability offering is based on our UXP (Unified eXchange Platform) technology.
UXP as the technical foundation of interoperability brings together data of different organisations and information systems for state-wide connectivity. This decentralised infrastructure platform is governed, maintained and monitored by a central governing authority. The security of the ecosystem is assured by encryption and the use of trust services.
Implementing the technology itself is just one step on a client's interoperability journey. Once you can exchange data over the UXP, you can start to build services. And this is where you see the real value of the platform. Our team supports technology implementation, but we also help assess the interoperability landscape, develop services for handover, and deliver training and capacity building to support local knowledge transfer. That's when the real value of interoperability becomes clear.
"When we talk about impact for governments, the ability to exchange data is what opens the door to high-quality digital services."
Is there such a thing as a typical day/week for your team? If so, what does it look like?
Whether I’m working from home or working at the office, I start by checking my emails and our internal messaging apps to get caught up. We also do stand-ups throughout the week for alignment and have a weekly department meeting to stay internally coordinated.
We are usually working on multiple projects with multiple clients so I think everyone’s week looks different depending on the pressing deadlines and the meetings that are scheduled.
Your team travels quite a bit. Any stories from the road you can share?
We have racked up quite the air miles! In my almost five years here, I've had the chance to travel to Namibia, Kenya, Madagascar, Botswana and Côte d'Ivoire. We've had team members go to Aruba, Malaysia, Tunisia, Benin, the UK, France and so many more places — really, just about everywhere.
As for stories, I don't think I can share any of them unless you have our internal email address 😉
How does the team handle it when a project goes sideways?
I’d love to say that doesn’t happen here, but (unsurprisingly) sometimes things just don’t go to plan despite best efforts.
I think we just work to maintain communication with our clients and work on finding solutions. At the end of the day, even when things aren’t working well, we remember that we have the same goal as the clients. We both want to see the impact from our project, and we want to do meaningful work.
With every project, we learn a bit more about the local context for our deployments, and with each retrospective we improve.
What kind of person tends to click with this team in terms of mindset and working style?
Being a self-starter is really important — we strongly encourage everyone in the department to share ideas on how we can improve the client interactions, the product, the processes and the services.
Because we work with clients from all over the world, being open-minded and curious is also really important. You’re going to be working with people from all kinds of different backgrounds, so it’s important to really consider their different needs when developing the implementation plan for the projects.
What's the hardest part of working in this team that you wouldn't want to gloss over?
Because each of our clients is based in a different country, the hardest part is really understanding the local context for each deployment. We work with local partners which helps a lot, and we do on-site missions as part of our deployments.
We even work with countries where the working language isn't English — and we use interpreters to assist. I like to think of that as our interoperability layer for human communication, just as we work on installing our interoperability layer for systems.
For each project the context is different and it’s really important to understand why this initiative is happening in the country and why it’s happening now. When we’re creating services, we have to work to understand which services are going to create the most impact.
"The work we do, in the end, impacts the efficiency of public administration and the services that citizens receive. It’s a big responsibility and we don’t take that lightly."
Like Sujani, you could find yourself helping governments around the world speak the same language — whether that's in Tallinn, Tartu, Nairobi, or somewhere you've never been before. We're always looking for curious, open-minded people who want their work to have a real impact on citizens' lives.