Estonian study: E-solutions have significantly speeded up public services

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Photo: Toomas Huik

 E-solutions have made public services up to 12 times faster than conventional services as well as improved their quality, it appears from a study commissioned by the Estonian Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications.

While research has been carried out in Estonia to measure the use of and satisfaction with e-services, a substantive analysis of their impact has not been done yet, head of the ministry's state information systems department Margus Puua said. "The purpose of the study was to devise a method and use it to establish how much time and money e-services save," he explained.

Of the 15 e-services evaluated in the framework of the pilot study, online filing of documents with the Tax and Customs Board and electronic registration of businesses were found to have the biggest impact. "If previously it took an estimated 375 minutes on the average to register a company, then after the creation of the e-solution the same procedure only takes an average of 30 minutes," Puua said by way of an example.

However, even more important than evaluation of existing solutions is to gain maximum benefit from future e-services. "The devised methodology is a tool that will help us assess the impact of all future e-solutions even before they are developed," Puua said.

The study that was commissioned jointly by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications and the ICT Demo Center was conducted by the Institute of Baltic Studies in cooperation with the Praxis Center for Policy Studies. Financing was provided by the European Union structural funds.

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