Riho Pihelpuu is the CEO of ADM, a group of digital agencies founded in Estonia that since 1997 have been designing, building and running mission-critical e-services for businesses and governments. Riho has studied in Estonian Business School eMBA program and holds a MSc from Tallinn University of Technology in business information technology. He pairs commercial acumen with deep public-sector experience, having led projects for Estonia, EU institutions and, most recently, emerging economies. He currently spearheads ADM’s work in Kenya, where his team is piloting GovStack-compliant Open-Source building blocks—including Information Mediator and revenue collection functionalities—to streamline birth registration, social-impact lending and vocational-education services. The aim is to digitalise those processes and to make them more effective, faster and more user friendly and convenient for the citizens of Kenya. At the 2025 e-Governance Conference workshop “From Analysis to Action: GovStack as the DPI Implementation Framework for Better Public e-Services,” Riho will distil these lessons and show both how to apply GovStack practices when designing green-field solutions from scratch and what the delights and pain points are when grafting GovStack principles onto legacy systems and entrenched processes. His goal: share a pragmatic roadmap for modular, interoperable digital public infrastructure that accelerates inclusive service delivery across Africa—and far beyond.
