Tiigrihüpe

Tiigrihüpe (Estonian for Tiger Leap) was a project undertaken by Republic of Estonia to heavily invest in development and expansion of computer and network infrastructure in Estonia, with a particular emphasis on education. The project was first proposed in 1996 by Toomas Hendrik Ilves, then ambassador of Estonia to United States and later President of Estonia, and Jaak Aaviksoo, then minister of Education. The project was announced by Lennart Meri, the President of Estonia, on 21 February 1996. Funds for the foundation of Tiigrihüpe were first allocated in national budget of 1997.

Tiigrihüpe logo.

An important primary effect of the project was rollout of Internet access to all Estonian schools, which effectively ended UUCP usage in Estonia, combined with installing computer labs in most schools, and replacing those that already existed with IBM PC based parks. Due to an economic and technological lag effected on Estonia by the Soviet occupation, CP/M-based 8-bit computer systems were not yet a rare sight in Estonian schools in the middle of the 1990s.

After the cyberattacks on Estonia in 2007, Estonia combined network defence with its common military doctrine. Success of the process led to NATO creating the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence in Tallinn. This project has been nicknamed Tiger Defence (Estonian: Tiigrikaitse) by analogy with Tiigrihüpe.[1]