Estonia gets e-government: Paper waste, bureaucracy to decrease

TALLINN - The state chancellery signed a contract last week with Estonia's leading IT firm for the purchase of a 2.5 million kroon ($150,000) computer system that will cut paper waste and make government meetings more efficient and accessible to the public.

Estonia's Microlink will lead the project by creating a computer information system that will cut back government bureaucracy by digitalizing documents, said the chancellery's IT director, Ermo Taks. The project, he said, is just the beginning of Estonia's e-government plan, which may eventually allow ministers to take part in e-meetings from faraway places.

"The current project does not cover the whole e-government idea. This is just a start project that is targeted toward more effective and innovative meetings of government," Riina Einberg, Microlink's e-government project manager, said.

Estonia, with its well-developed and interactive government Web sites, has not let itself fall behind Western countries in its pursuit of bringing government into the digital age. But Einberg said technology was lacking in Toompea Castle, where an ill-equipped Cabinet meeting room was without PCs, laptops, or any presentation system other than microphones.

"This is not the way people work effectively in the 21st century, especially when they have to go through so many documents," she said.

The Stenbock House, where the government moved its headquarters at the beginning of the month, will get the new system in August. It will include Web-based software and 20 workstation modules for each Cabinet minister and meeting secretaries, 10 laptops for officials participating in meetings, and a video and audio system to enhance presentation quality.

Ministers and secretaries will now be able to consult advisers in other buildings, follow meeting agendas and research legislation and other documents while in session, rather than having to carry stacks of paper to each meeting. Meeting secretaries will be able to input notes on decisions and voting results as they happen.

The major benefit will come from the sytem's digitalizing of documents, which will help decrease the 17,000 photocopies made each week for government sessions and make coordinating drafts between ministries easier.

"We are sure that electronic layout of documents and HTML presentation will make it easier to manage this huge amount of documentation before and during the meetings," said Taks, whose department oversees the publication of drafts in the state archives and publishing house, as well as the transfer of drafts from state and county government meetings to the prime minister and Parliament.

"The prime purpose is to make documentation workflow fully electronic from the very beginning up the file through all the necessary harmonization and decision making in the ministries, the state chancellery and Parliament," Taks said.

The government currently spends about 1 million kroons on copies each year, and should see the project's money return in the next three to four years through money saved on photocopies, he said.

"There are some indirect benefits too, but they are very hard to evaluate," he said, citing better decision making, more efficient meetings, positive environmental effects, and a higher level of democracy through advanced publishing of debate issues.

While the system is supposed to be fully secure, not all government materials will be posted at first.

"The problem will be with the closed meetings and closed agenda points," Taks said. "It is possible that for security reasons we won't include them in the electronic system until we are absolutely sure that it is secure."

While the first phase of the innovative system will be an experimental one, in which users will be trained and new ideas tested, the government plans to add to the list of functions in the future.

"In the long term we see many possibilities to increase the efficiency of government work," Taks said. The most concrete plans include the use of digital signatures and video- conferencing to allow Cabinet members to work and participate in meetings while abroad.

"In the future, after changes in legal acts regulating the procedures of the meetings of government, it will be possible to do more work at home, and the ministers will be able to give their opinion on problems discussed in government meetings via the Internet by using secure e-applications," said Einberg, whose company will work with two other IT companies on the project.

Depending on implementation of the digital signature law that was passed in spring, e-signatures should be ready for use in Cabinet meetings within the next six months, Taks said.

The main reason that videoconferencing is not included in the current phase of the system is that legislation does not allow Cabinet members to take part in virtual meetings. But if all goes well, videoconferencing should be used in the future, such as when the Ministry of Education moves to Tartu next year, he said.

"We have the possibility to establish a new and very modern system," said Priit Poiklik, spokesman for Prime Minister Mart Laar, who initiated the project. "Our good side is that we have always been small and mobileÉWe don't have to run after Western countries. We have a possibility to run before them."