Speaking to Johannes Tralla, Sikkut said he attended a government meeting on Thursday to discuss, among other things, additional needs for Estonian IT systems. 

Sikkut, who is also Deputy Secretary-General for IT and Telecoms, explained that "€35 to €40 million a year is needed to maintain the e-government, with a minimum of €27 to €30 million".

Replying to Tralla's question whether Estonia had a chronic problem of underfunding of information systems, Sikkut said that it had arisen over the years.

"Our burden and baggage is that we have had quite a lot of money, European money, for example, to build new services. We have also added a lot [to what we have] over the years. Today, usually, people do everything they can do digitally. Officials also work digitally. We do not have paper processes left, except a few exceptions.

"But when looking at investments, we have not looked at whether there is enough money in the wallet to keep these things constantly evolving, innovating, and up-to-date. Likewise, the technology, the hardware, the infrastructure that goes down. This has been a problem for a while," he added.

E-residents bring one million euros a month to the Treasury

Sikkut also spoke about e-residents in the broadcast. According to him, Estonia currently has more than 50,000 active e-residents, who have created about 8,000 active companies.

The purpose of the e-residency program was to bring additional income to the Estonian economy, which has proven itself well, Sikkut said.

"Today we are in a situation where more than one million euros are being added to the treasury every month because of e-residency, as their added value," he said.

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