Podcast 🎧 & blog: What leadership through digital change actually looks like
Written by Federico Plantera, Researcher on tech policy and AI
Leadership in the public sector has always demanded resilience. This is best exemplified by three elements:
- the ability to hold long-term vision steady while reacting to short-term pressures,
- to build consensus across institutions that do not naturally cooperate, and
- to keep an organisation moving when the ground shifts beneath it. Digital transformation has sharpened all of these demands. The leaders steering this process need more than technical knowledge. They need self-awareness, the capacity to build the team and trust it, and the judgment to know when a crisis is also an opportunity.
In this episode of the Digital Government Podcast, hosted by Merle Maigre, Head of Cybersecurity at e-Governance Academy, we hear from Taimar Peterkop – former State Secretary of Estonia, former Director General of the Information System Authority, and now Senior Expert at the e-Governance Academy. Drawing on over two decades at some of Estonia’s most consequential institutions, Peterkop shares practical wisdom on what it takes to lead through change and crisis – with honesty and without pretending to have all the answers.
Self-awareness can be healthy and grounding
For Peterkop, self-awareness is not a soft add-on to leadership. It is the foundation. “When we are young, we have this perception of ourselves, and it has a lot to do with who we want to be, not who we are,” he reflects. Over time, experience and honest feedback close that gap. At the Government Office of Estonia, he introduced coaching for top managers across the Estonian public sector, pairing senior leaders as mentors for newcomers. “That proved to be one of the most effective tools.”
His own trajectory confirms it. When he took the helm of the Information System Authority, a completely new domain, he sought out a trusted advisor to reflect openly with him. “Being a top manager, you’re alone. It’s very difficult to discuss the issues with somebody in the organisation or even the outside.” And personal upkeep matters too: Peterkop speaks openly about having burned out in one position. His prescription is exercise, reading widely – fiction, science fiction – and protecting time for thinking. At least in his case, cross-country skiing can solve some of the hardest problems.
Happy people in a team are the most effective
Empathy comes first – “be curious and understand other people” – but that alone does not build effective organisations. Peterkop outlines the essentials: a shared vision the team can rally behind, the right mix of people who complement each other and compensate for the leader’s own weaknesses, and an atmosphere where talented people can work to their full potential. “I believe that happy people are the most effective. So, I always tried to create an atmosphere where people can be happy.”
During the COVID crisis, the Government Office initially relied on its security establishment. But effectiveness grew when Peterkop brought in people from strategic planning and other departments with little connection to security. Different perspectives sharpened the response. And it ties back to confidence: a leader secure enough in their own limitations will not shy away from surrounding themselves with people who are, in his words, “much wiser, much smarter than I am.”
With that comes the courage to be honest. Early in his tenure as State Secretary, Peterkop told the government that a wrong decision had been made and that he was to blame. His colleagues were appalled. “Government Office doesn’t make mistakes,” they told him. He sees it differently. “If you are confident enough, then you can admit that you’re making mistakes. And that actually makes you stronger.”
Communication runs through the entire conversation. Information in organisations flows upward easily, but rarely cascades back down. “You usually need to communicate three times what you think is enough, and it’s still a problem that people don’t get the message.”
Innovation and the permission to fail
The Government Office took it upon itself – even without an explicit legal mandate – to foster an innovation culture across the Estonian public sector executive branch. Many of the innovation team members were not seasoned civil servants. “They were hipsters from Kalamaja,” Peterkop says, referring to Tallinn’s creative quarter. Some were surprised to find themselves working in government. But they thrived, and the leader’s job was to let them push.
Innovation, he argues, rarely comes from pronouncements at the top. It rises from people close to the problems who see how things could be done differently. The leader’s role is to protect that space, and to make sure that failure, when it comes for objective reasons, is accepted as part of the process. “There is almost no room in the public sector to fail. You always have to succeed – otherwise you’re crucified, either by the politicians or by the journalists.”
And on artificial intelligence: be proactive, explore, and learn about the risks along the way. But there must always be a human in the loop. “We should build our infrastructure in a way that we are in control, and we should always communicate that we are in control.”
Crisis as test (and as opportunity)
Peterkop steered the Government Office through the 2017 ID-card crisis, the COVID pandemic, and the escalation of Russia’s war against Ukraine. Estonia, he observes, is quite good at reacting to crises – small, dynamic, with a proactive culture among both politicians and civil servants. Preparation is more uneven, instead. “It’s better to learn from other countries than only through your own experience, especially when it comes to a crisis.”
But crises also open windows. After the one on ID-cards, Peterkop saw satisfied every budget request he made. Before Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, the rising tension enabled the government to fund comprehensive defence capabilities. “The plans were there, but we couldn’t get political support. So, we leveraged the tension that was rising in Ukraine to push that through.”
Crisis communication, meanwhile, he distils into a simple and direct acronym: ABC. Always Be Cool. “During a crisis, the anxiety level is high. You need to calm things down, demonstrate that there is a light at the end of the tunnel – and that it’s not a train.”
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