Estonia hosts eResidency hackathon

IT professionals, eResidents and entrepreneurs teamed up to take part in the Garage48 eResidency hackathon, which took place on the Estonian island of Vormsi over the weekend of 12-13 September 2015.The hackathon was unique in that, for the first time ever, IT-professionals joined with eResidents and entrepreneurs to build innovative eServices using the eResidency open digital ID platform. The focus was on building apps and services to benefit both the eResidents and the service providers.Web and mobile developers, designers, project leads, marketers and visionaries as well as expert mentors took part in the hackathon, which included more than 130 participants from 26 countries including Japan, Portugal, US, Nigeria, Latvia, Switzerland, Lithuania, Colombia, Australia, Netherlands, Belarus, Lebanon, Uzbekistan, Turkey and Finland."We are cooperating with Garage48 to encourage the first teams to conquer the world developing services using the eResidency open digital identity platform," said Kaspar Korjus, the eResidency programme director. "eResidency will become the world's standard for digital identity and the Garage48 eResidency could become the stepping stone for the world-conquering plans of the teams taking part in the hackathon."Garage48 co-founder and technical mentor Priit Salumaa added: "The support of entrepreneurship by the Estonian governmental bodies is phenomenal and rare in the world. We in Garage48 have organised hackathons in four continents, but have not seen such digital possibilities to run enterprises as in Estonia. The eResidency platform enables citizens of other countries and current partners to create businesses using Estonian eResidency and be part of the truly innovative system."Taavi Kotka, Government CIO and Deputy Secretary General of ICT at the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications for Estonia, said: "Our goal with the hackathon is to draw attention to the fact that all developers and service providers are welcome to develop services to the open digital identity platform. The eResidency platform could in many aspects be compared to the Apple App Store, as it allows the creation of many needed services to eResidents. It is very important that the new customer base is recognised by the developers and service providers, who may already offer their services to eResidents."The hackathon was organised in co-operation with international hackathon organisation Garage48, Enterprise Estonia, the Estonian Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications and the Information System Authority.

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