CHAPTER 18Taavi Kotka: Estonia
Taavi Kotka is an entrepreneur and former Estonian Government CIO. He has been honored as the European CIO of the Year in 2014, and Estonia's E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year in 2011.
Taavi served as the GCIO in Republic of Estonia from 2013 to 2017, during which time he cofounded Estonia's e-Residency program and led its delivery. Prior, he worked in the private sector. He started his career as a programmer, rising to be a CEO of the largest software development company in the region—Webmedia (now Nortal). Taavi also served as president of the Estonian Association of Information Technology and Telecommunications from 2009 to 2013.
Since leaving the government, Taavi has been back in private sector, helping his start-ups and consulting large enterprises and governments on digital transformation. Besides his own company Proud Engineers, he has been the CEO of Jio Research Center in Estonia since 2018 (a subsidiary of Indian telecom giant Reliance/Jio).
It is quite certain that I would not have become the Government CIO for Estonia if it had not been for Taavi to fill those shoes as my predecessor. We joined the digital government work around the same time, both part of wider political effort to restart the digital innovation engine for the country and government.
To wake up an engine once the battery is a bit flat, you need to jumpstart it. ...
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