Back
Table of Contents
Ingrid Pappel has been involved with e-governance in Estonia more or less since the beginning of what is referred to as the e-state or digital nation. In her new role as vice rector of academic affairs at Tallinn University of Technology, she strives to stay current with the rapid pace of change in an era when AI has infiltrated every aspect of education. She is also working to educate the rising generation, which uses other platforms like TikTok, about e-governance.
In the 1990s, while working in the private sector, Pappel was involved with the creation of platforms like the iconic real estate website kv.ee, that gave her hands-on expertise that she later used when advising the government in the ’00s. She was also involved with Amphora, a document management software platform, which served as the foundation for paperless administration in the public sector. Building on these experiences, Ingrid began digitalizing public services in local municipalities in Estonia. All of this provided the basis for her doctoral research, which focused on creating a framework to support local governments in the transition to paperless administration, under the common denominator of the eLovGov model.
In 2013, Pappel joined Tallinn University of Technology (TalTech) and oversaw the creation of its master’s program in e-Government Technologies and Services, which she refers to as the university’s “flagship” in providing courses on e-governance and telling the Estonian story to the world. Pappel continued to lead that program until earlier this year, when she was named vice rector for academic affairs at the university.
The Quadruple Helix
In a way, her career in the private and public sectors as well as academia is an example of what she calls the “quadruple helix” in Estonia’s digital ecosystem. Rather than being dominated by the government, academic research projects, or R&D at startups, each contributes to the whole.
All this work has provided valuable input for her research, where real-life problems have been integrated with theoretical frameworks. Her research focuses on the management of digital transformation in the public sector. While she began her research two decades ago by studying issues related to the digitalization of public sector processes and services, Pappel has now reached a point where it is necessary to build AI-based solutions on top of digital solutions.
This all brings a new dimension and depth to her field of research.
“In Estonia, we try to find that balance, to engage different stakeholders,” says Pappel. She notes that all student projects in the e-Government Technologies and Services program involve government and industry. And TalTech takes part in working groups focused on state strategies.
In her new position as vice rector for academic affairs, Pappel has a vision to increase the proportion of challenge-based and interdisciplinary learning at TalTech. Her goal is to bring real-world problems from businesses and industries closer to students and give student teams a chance to solve these real-life challenges. “Today, inter- and multidisciplinarity are the norm,” she says, “and AI is certainly what connects everything.”
In Constant Flux
Estonia’s narrative about its digital society can at times feel like an all-too-familiar greatest hits package of accomplishments. There was the restoration of independence, the desire to catch up to Western Europe, the lack of legacy technologies that fostered technology innovation and adoption. X-Road, the backbone of the country’s ecosystem of services, was rolled out in 2001, and i-voting was first piloted in 2005 and introduced in 2007, for example. But Estonia’s e-governance technologies and services are constantly being upgraded, revised, and refitted.
Educators like Pappel have to stay abreast of those changes and integrate them into studies.
“We are constantly changing the program, adjusting based on new trends,” says Pappel. Most recently, AI is being integrated into state services, notably through the launch of an online virtual assistant called Bürokratt that helps users to get answers to their queries. In response, TalTech has developed a course that focuses on AI in the public sector. While the foundation of the coursework does not change radically, it expands to cover new technologies and techniques.
The master’s program continues to be a success. Pappel says that students from 60 different countries have taken part over the years, most of whom go into the public sector afterwards, though a sizable minority (around 20 percent) go to work in the private sector. Many also stay in Estonia and have found jobs at local companies like Wise or Bolt. “It’s a comfortable ecosystem,” she remarks. “And not such a big community. I think they feel very cozy here.”
AI Native
While TalTech is integrating AI increasingly into its courses. Earlier this year, it also launched a bachelor’s program in informatics and artificial intelligence.
According to Pappel, it is the goal of TalTech to be an “AI native university,” where AI tools are integrated at every level of study. To accomplish this, she also chairs the university’s AI Council, which strives to lead and guide the university’s development in the field of AI. This also involves collaboration with the public and private sector in the form of ongoing workshops and seminars.
AI is not seen as a choice, Pappel notes, but rather a technology that is here to stay and that will require some changes in mindset. In particular, she is trying to teach younger people how to use it, considering elementary school students have already become accustomed to using ChatGPT. “They can use these tools, but they must also learn critical thinking,” Pappel stresses.
“AI is a good tool or approach to be used, but wisely.”
Thus, TalTech’s goal is to use artificial intelligence in ways that enhance academic and professional work, foster creativity, and generate new knowledge. At the same time, the university seeks to empower its people and bring a deeper understanding of AI use closer to the entire community. Equally important is enabling leaders to make more data-driven decisions, while allowing support staff to minimize routine tasks and concentrate on activities that create greater value.
Based on this, Pappel finds that she is similarly adopting AI to handle her responsibilities as vice rector. “I think all project or admin reporting can be done using different AI tools, because you can feed in proper data and get results quickly,” Pappel remarks. That has allowed her to reduce the administrative burden associated with being a vice rector as well as research project manager.
“It used to take me two or three days to do these tasks, now it only takes two hours,” she says. “It’s a big difference.” However, she maintains that one must be able to critically evaluate AI-generated outputs and, in any case, verify whether the response is adequate. “No technology can be trusted blindly,” says Pappel.
EGov4Youth
That time savings has allowed Pappel to continue to focus on research projects within the Next Gen Digital State Research Group, part of TalTech’s department of software science, where she is an associate professor. The group is focused on studying the use of advanced technologies in e-governance and has expertise related to digital transformation, implementing AI, the adoption of new business practices, and turning academic research into applicable recommendations.
The group also undertakes various projects, such as E-Gov4Youth. Pappel is the principal investigator on the two-year effort, which commenced last year and aims to make digital public services more accessible to younger people and to better involve them in local decision-making processes.
“Young people are not so much involved with these kinds of services, they use TikTok and other social media platforms,” Pappel says. “So we are trying to raise their awareness, to discuss AI as well as the ethical aspects of these services, cybersecurity and so on,” she says. The EGov4Youth team, which involves participants from Cyprus, Norway, Bulgaria, Greece, and Italy, are also studying how young people perceive digital state services. As part of the effort, they have also created what they term a massive open online course (MOOC) to teach young people about the components of e-governance and to support the co-development of policies.
In addition to these activities, her research group has also designed several training programs and learning formats related to e-governance. One of the most notable has been the Women in GovTech initiative, launched under the GovStack project, through which 127 women from 49 countries were trained online. The program focused on the digitalization and automation of public services in the public sector, aiming to empower women to take an active role in the future of digital governance. Building on such initiatives, the group has also produced a number of academic publications, where Pappel’s doctoral students have often taken the lead by enriching their theoretical research perspectives with practical experiments and applied insights.
This article is written by Justin Petrone. This article was funded by the European Regional Development Fund through Estonian Research Council.
If this dive into AI has you feeling smart already, don’t log off! Upgrade to our next article and read more about how Imperial College London’s Marek Rei is Using Machine Learning and Language Models to Improve Healthcare.
