Sometimes being a small country is beneficial – especially when it comes to digitising public sector processes and services. We are more flexible, adapt faster to change and innovate more boldly. Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia have made significant progress in digitising public sector services for citizens and businesses.
But the European Union (EU) is gearing up for innovation, for example, by updating regulations to extend and consolidate personal e-identification across EU Member States and to mandate an e-ID wallet that works in all EU countries. Are we ready to embrace these innovations and continue on the path of digitisation?
“The Baltic countries can be proud of their high ratings for the development and availability of digital services in the public sector. However, when we compare ourselves to business, we are doing rather poorly and struggling to keep up with the pace of change, which is constantly increasing,” says Eimantas Norkūnas, Head of the Governance Department of the Government of Lithuania.
Norkūnas, who spoke at the discussion “Building future-proof public services in the Baltics” along other Baltic public sector and business representatives, points to the example of Estonia, where solutions that are yet to be implemented in the EU have been in place for several years.
Bold decisions and trust
According to Doris Põld, CEO of the Estonian Information Technology and Telecommunications Association, the country’s breakthrough is due to the bold decisions of its leaders and a lack of funds, which has led to more cooperation with IT service companies. In addition, Estonia has succeeded in gaining the trust of its citizens, who believe that digital solutions are more reliable.
Electronic signatures have become so standard in Estonia that if a person is offered to sign a document by hand, they are likely to refuse or try to see through the fraud: people and businesses no longer sign documents on paper, but rather rely on the systems, the security of their data and the management of their documents.
How to achieve this breakthrough in Lithuania? Žilvinas Kazlauskas, CEO of DocLogix, is convinced that we would get on the digital highway faster if public sector institutions communicated more and shared best practices with each other.
Communication is the key to change
Ž. Kazlauskas notes that digital progress in the public sector is not uniform – some institutions and organisations started digitising their documents and processes decades ago, while others are just starting to do so. There are also bizarre situations where a document signed with an e-signature is printed again, the paper document is put in an envelope and sent by post, even though the institution doing this has implemented e-document management solutions. This is caused by either a fear or a lack of knowledge. To accelerate digitisation, the public sector should share best practices, form communities and learn from each other.
“Most institutions face similar problems. By sharing knowledge – what e-document management systems they use, what processes they have in place, what challenges they are facing and how they are tackling them – they could achieve change faster. What’s more, automating processes saves a lot of time that public sector employees could be spending on more creative and challenging tasks,” says the DocLogix CEO.
It's important to keep users and professionals in mind
Guna Puce, Chief Digital Officer at the Latvian Ministry of Justice, talks about the challenges of digitisation of legal institutions in Latvia, first of all mentioning the lack of specialists: there is a shortage of staff who are competent in problem solving and systems implementation. However, having competent and skilled staff to educate the citizens is also important.
“When digitising services and processes, we need to keep in mind the most vulnerable group – those who are not familiar with technology. We cannot leave them behind. Public sector workers have an important role to play here: do they understand the possibilities of digital services themselves, and do they know how to use them? That’s why we have started to train the staff of the institutions so that they can share their knowledge with the users”, says the Latvian representative.
The debate on the development of digital tools in the EU is ongoing, with new regulations and requirements being updated and developed for public sector bodies, e-solutions developers, financial institutions and others. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Digital Governance Index 2023 reports that among the 33 Member States, all the Baltic States are above average. Lithuania’s highest score is 9th place in the benchmark, which assesses the country’s efforts to develop common mechanisms to enable public authorities to use digital tools and data consistently and strategically to improve processes and services. Latvia ranks 9th, Estonia 10th and Lithuania follows in 12th place, according to the openness benchmark, which covers not only the disclosure of open data, but also efforts to promote the use of technology and data through communication and cooperation with various stakeholders.