Estonian data embassy in Luxembourg to cost €2.2m

The first Estonian data embassy to be hosted in Luxembourg, storing sensitive data for the Estonian government, will cost a total of €2.2 million over the next five years.

According to news organisations in the Baltic state, Emilie Toomela, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications, told the Baltic News Service (BNS) the rental agreement with Luxembourg was expected to enter into force from January 1, 2018.

Toomela told BNS that rent and data expenses, which the ministry claims will reach €236,000 a year over a five-year period, would be an additional charge to the €1 million needed to establish the embassy.

"According to current plans, setting up the technical solution of the embassy should be finished by the end of the first half of 2018 at the latest," Toomela told BNS.

"The work of the data embassy itself is to start at the latest by the end of the same year."

The agency said Luxembourg was chosen to host the data embassy because of its "highly secured data centre, which meets NATO standards", as well as the Grand-Duchy's distance from the original servers, which is necessary for critical data back-up.

World's first data embassy on foreign territory

Earlier this year, Luxembourg announced that it would hold the world's first data embassy on its territory.

It will store sensitive data for the Estonian government, and only individuals cleared by the Estonian state will have access to it.

Luxembourg's Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, during an official visit to Tallinn in March, cited the data embassy initiative as a concrete example for both countries' cooperation in the ICT sector.

''We share the same determination to develop digital policy in the larger sense and to invest in the digitalisation of our economy and our society for the good of our citizens and enterprises,'' he said.

Normal concept in 10 years' time

In an interview with the Luxembourger Wort following the announcement that the data embassy was making its way to the Grand-Duchy, Gilles Feith, director of the Luxembourg government IT centre (CTIE), said the data embassy concept would be "normal in 10 years' time".

He said Luxembourg had the highest density of Tier-4 data centres in the world – the top certification for data centres from the Uptime Institute.

To keep raising Luxembourg's profile as a trusted centre in Europe, Feith said the Grand-Duchy must further increase the level of data security and resilience it offers.

''The digital sector already today is to Luxembourg what the banking sector used to be in the past,'' Feith said.

(Heledd Pritchard, heledd.pritchard@wort.lu, +352 49 93 459)