In her keynote speech “Digital Government: From Theory to Practice”, Liina Areng highlighted that building a digital government is not merely a technological project, but a long-term political, institutional and cultural shift, and shared experiences from Estonia’s 25-year digital transformation, emphasising how these lessons learned can support Panama’s ambitions for a smarter, more citizen-centric digital government.

She drew several key lessons that make digital transformation a success:

• Prioritising secure digital identity and interoperability.
• Developing a clear national strategy with strong political leadership.
• Innovating through GovTech platforms and regulatory sandboxes.
• Starting by digitizing high-impact services like health, taxes, and business registration.
• Leveraging regional cooperation and EU-backed initiatives like #LAC4 to build cybersecurity resilience.

Liina Areng explained that a key driver of Estonia’s success was its alignment with the European Union’s digital policies and legal frameworks. For example, Estonia adopted the EU’s eIDAS regulation to establish a legally binding digital identity system; applied the GDPR to strengthen trust and data privacy; and implements the European Interoperability Framework through the decentralised data exchange platform X-Road.

She also stressed that Estonia’s experience within the EU proves that regional cooperation and legal alignment boost trust, efficiency and innovation. Liina Areng encouraged Panama to build its digital transformation on similar principles — investing early in shared standards, security, and collaboration to ensure no one is left behind and long-term success.

Implementing Digital Government

Following the keynote speech, Liina Areng joined a panel discussion “Implementation of Digital Government: Success Stories and Lessons Learnt” where panelists explored the practical implementation of digital governance strategies and highlighted good examples from the Americas and Europe with emphasis on innovation, artificial intelligence, governance, transparency, regulation and competitiveness.

CADE 2025, organised by the Panamanian Association of Business Executives (APEDE) serves as a national platform for discussions on socioeconomic development, governance and public-private collaboration.

Liina Areng also had bilateral meetings with the Panama’s ministries of public security and foreign affairs as well as the National Secretariat of Science, Technology and Innovation (SENACYT) to explore how EU CyberNet and LAC4 can support Panama’s cybersecurity efforts through the LAC4 Centre. Panama has been member of LAC4 Centre since 2023.