On Monday, 21 October, Minister of Smart Administration and Regional Development Inga Bērziņa, together with German Minister of Digital Affairs and Transport Volker Wissing and business sector representative from Finland Peter Sarlin, will discuss the global digital future, including challenges posed by artificial intelligence, cyber security, infrastructure development and promoting digital innovation at the Digital-Gipfel Summit.
Minister Inga Bērziņa: "The German-Baltic Innovation Club is a successful format where we can share experiences and develop new cooperation projects in both the public and private sectors. Latvia's experience in using artificial intelligence and other innovative digital solutions in the digitalisation of public administration services, as well as IT solutions offered by Latvian companies, can be useful for the German side."
Latvia is successfully using AI technologies. Automatic translation, speech recognition and transcription tools have been developed. Virtual assistants for public administration are hosted on a shared machine translation platform. The electronic declaration system enables quick and easy resolution of issues with the State Revenue Service, real estate issues are dealt with on the State Land Service portal "Kadastrs.lv", Diginotārs is a virtual notary's office, a secure digital environment where all parties to a transaction can meet, conclude a secure transaction.
National AI priorities include developing national language models and making national language datasets publicly available, as well as promoting the representation of small languages and cultures in global language models.
At government level, various levels of activities are planned to promote innovation based on AI solutions. These include ensuring the development of MI capacities and competences at all levels, fostering sectoral productivity, the development of new products and services using MI capabilities, and modernising public administration. Training programmes on MI and data management for public administration staff have been developed to increase the efficiency of public administration.
Latvia is on the way to creating a flexible environment for the development, validation and deployment of MI applications. This will improve service quality, productivity and foster innovation. Such an environment will also strengthen the country's capacity to manage MI-related risks, including cyber security risks, protect human rights and support democratic processes.
In the panel discussion "Shaping the global digital future together in Europe and beyond", the Minister and her interlocutors discussed the digital policy challenges facing the EU and the world and drew attention to the recommendations of the German-Baltic Innovation Club on digital policy-making for the new European Commission.
German representatives highly value the Baltic States, including the EU. The Baltic States appreciate the progress made by the Baltic States and Latvia in modernising and digitising their administration, which opens up opportunities for both experience exchange and strategic cooperation. Minister Inga Bērziņa, together with her German, Lithuanian and Estonian counterparts, has launched an Innovation Club to support the Digital Single Market, while calling for more pragmatic and effective approaches to achieve it.
The theme of the German Digital Summit is "Digital Germany - Innovative. Sovereign. International", taking place from 21 to 22 October in Frankfurt. The summit brings together more than 1500 participants, including business, academia, civil society and government representatives.