President T. H. Ilves joined the University of Tartu in writing the next chapter in the global digital story

The post-presidential resume of Toomas Hendrik Ilves includes lecturing at Stanford and Columbia universities and at the University of Tartu, focusing on cybersecurity, disinformation and the foundations of the digital society. In addition, he has taken on many international advisory roles with an aim to contribute to strengthening digital development and cybersecurity. This has included co-chairing the World Economic Forum working group the Global Future Council on Blockchain Technology and sitting on the Advisory Board of the Munich Security Conference just to name a couple among many more.

Now President Ilves has focused his energy and vision on exporting Estonian education by proposing and serving as the patron of a new unique executive master’s programme the Master of Digitalization Administration (MDA) at the University of Tartu. MDA is the first of its kind globally and serves as the equivalent of a master of business administration but in digitalisation. This programme capitalises on Estonia’s success and extensive expertise as a pioneering force in digitalisation both in Europe and globally, but goes beyond the unique local case and offers a comprehensive and comparative take on how to build digital nations across governance domains and national borders.

President Ilves himself joins many experts as a lecturer on the programme. Given that he played a crucial role in supervising and endorsing the digitalisation initiatives for Estonia’s public services and fostering the remarkable success of Estonia’s startup culture while serving as president, he has a wealth of knowledge on how to move the public sector towards adopting digital solutions and ensuring service uptake among the population.

The MDA programme covers a lot, starting with the technological, social and political prerequisites of digital nations, key technologies and governance designs powering most digital solutions, new ways of designing pro-active and life-event based digital services, as well as domain-specific challenges of digitalisation services for public health, education, labour market measures and sustainable development. MDA students will also have the opportunity to learn from the leaders of Estonian unicorn companies and be trained to recognise business cases that digitalisation offers in all mentioned domains.

As with MBA programmes, the MDA offers not only knowledge and a diploma from a top European university, but also access to a global peer-to-peer network in digital governance. The MDA is a one-year online master programme that includes a visit to Estonia.

More information: ut.ee/mda

The post was published in Honorary Consuls of Estonia monthly, December 2023.