Ieva Ilves

Ieva Ilves

Advisor to the President of Latvia

Ieva Ilves advises the President on digital policy and information technology. Her focus is to build a strong digital Latvia, where people, ideas and companies benefit from technologies. Under the leadership of the President she encourages discussions and the search for solutions to protect democracy in the digital age. This entails freedom of speech, privacy and rule of law online, while promoting innovation and growth of technology.
Earlier, Ieva Ilves was in charge of cyber security policy at the Ministry of Defense and served as a diplomat in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and abroad. Ieva spent three years in Silicon Valley to enrich her perspective on the future of technologies, worked for the EU mission in Baku, Azerbaijan and the Latvian delegation at NATO HQ in Brussels.
She has a MA from the University of Latvia and an MIPP from Johns Hopkins University SAIS.
In 2007 Ieva Ilves received the state award “The Cross of Recognition”.

In her address Ieva Ilves will focus on privacy aspects using digital technology reflecting the most recent experience – developing digital contact tracing application “Apturi COVID”. Some thoughts on the topic are reflected in her article published in “The Guardian” last year - “Why are Google and Apple dictating how European democracies fight coronavirus?”