Thinking ahead of the curve: how to cope with digital transformation?

UCL's School of European Languages, Culture and Society (SELCS) and UCL events are hosting a major lecture on digital transformation by the President of Estonia, Ms Kersti Kaljulaid.
Wednesday 28 March 2018, 2.30pm-3.30pm

About the lecture

As President of Estonia I represent the world's only digital society which actually has a State - the Estonian digital society of 1,3 million people, our whole population. We have gone through a societal disruption to make sure our citizens and businesses have a totally digital environment to deal with both the State and also with their private partners. It has now been 18 years and a generation that we have been using our X-Road platform - we call it cross-roads because people and business meet on that platform.

Mainly because we are already around the first bend, we are now seeing clearly the questions that will arise for digital societies once we are all digital. Is not only industry 4.0 but much more. It`s societal disruption.

We see that the most urgent issues that will arise would at first be taxation of companies in digital societies - where to tax if transactions happen completely or partially online, how this taxation system should be handled.

It's also necessary to understand, that because of ongoing digital disruption, our social model, that has born in industrial age and based very much on the last centuries understanding of how society works, is now dead.

And probably the most urgent issue we have to solve: how should look like learning and teaching in digital age.

The lecture will be chaired by Dr Uta Staiger, Executive Director of the UCL European Institute. 

Biography

In 2016 Kersti Kaljulaid was elected President of the Republic of Estonia. Previously she served from 2004 to 2016 as a Member of the European Court of Auditors. Kersti Kaljulaid was the CFO and CEO of the Iru Power Plant of state-owned energy company Eesti Energia from 2002 to 2004. From 1999 to 2002, Kersti Kaljulaid was Prime Minister Mart Laar's Economic Advisor.

Kersti Kaljulaid was a member of the Supervisory Board of the Estonian Genome Center from 2001 to 2004. She was also a member of the Advisory Board of the University of Tartu from 2009 to 2011 and the Council Chair of the University from 2012 to 2016.

Kersti Kaljulaid graduated from the University of Tartu in 1992 in the field of genetics in the Faculty of Natural Sciences and completed her master's studies in the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration in 2001.

Register here