Building a digital Europe: interview with Einar Mantyla / EDIH Iceland

Could you please introduce yourself and your EDIH, highlighting its field of expertise and how you are helping SMEs and the public sector to overcome their challenges?

My name is Einar Mantyla and I am the coordinator of the only EDIH in Iceland. We are basically serving the whole country, facilitating access and knowledge transfer to Europe and vice versa. We are a well-connected, well-digitalised small country. Iceland is the perfect place to pilot-test solutions. We invite other EDIHs to bring their ideas to our country, to test them, and get feedback fast from a real society. Our smallness is a strength.

Could you share with us a success story in which one of your clients has made progress in their digital transformation thanks to the services of your EDIH?

As I mentioned, we have built up the EDIH from scratch. We did not have a foundation in place. Nevertheless, we have already been able to create a collaboration between the two biggest and competing universities in Iceland. They have established, in record time, a master’s programme in digital transformation and cybersecurity. It serves the need to address these issues so we can build up national expertise. Furthermore, we have invited SMEs to come in and tell us what their expectations are regarding the services that our EDIH can provide. That has been very useful as it’s real-world contact that ensures we are not producing solutions in search of a problem but that we are tackling actual problems.

Have you had the opportunity to successfully collaborate with another EDIH from the Network?

Not yet, but we have established a group within the Nordic countries. We have seen other EDIHs from such groups foster collaboration among people who face similar challenges in a similar environment. Within the Nordics, the other countries are our next-door neighbours; the culture is similar, the work methods, the ethics, the culture – so the foundation of trust is already there. We are building on that kind of existing partnership, but in a totally new field. It’s very exciting for us.

What message or which advice would you like to share with fellow participants as we collectively work towards the growth and advancement of the EDIH Network?

Well, it’s important to meet up in real life because Teams or Zoom meetings alone do not generate trust. Trust is very important. But I think we need to be cautious not to network just for the purpose of networking. We need to network to get work done. We must speed up and really get to work for Europe to make it as a digitally forward country in the future. And Europe can certainly be, in my mind, a world leader in digital democracy – human-oriented digital democracy.