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State (governance) reform

Governance reform is needed, above all, to cope with a shrinking population and growing labour shortages, but citizens still expect to receive high-quality public services throughout Estonia. The implementation of reform is intended to achieve the following: more efficient and effective execution of public tasks, provision of higher quality public services, more flexible and less bureaucratic organisation of the general government sector, as well as the relative reduction of government expenditures. The goal is unified and efficient governance that takes into account the needs of the population. Public administration reform is not a one-time undertaking, but a continuous modernisation of public administration.
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The benchmarks to assess the effective governance are the following:

  • The proportion of government sector employees to working age population (in the age group of 15-74) will not increase (maintaining the level below 12%)

  • The proportion of government sector expenditures to GDP will not increase (maintaining the level below 39.3%)

  • The government sector compensations for employees / GDP will not increase (maintaining the level below 11.3%)

The activities of the state reform

  • Restructuring or consolidation of agencies in order to ensure higher quality services and more efficient use of resources:

    • Analysing the consolidation of Estonian Private Forest Center and Environmental Investment Center
    • Consolidation of Enteprise Estonia and Foundation KredEx

  • Improving the accessibility of open data

  • Implementation of event-based services for businesses

  • Analysis of previous state reform activities and 

  • Simplifying the preparing process area specifications and accessibility of spatial data

  • Digitalisation of the justice domain

  • Fostering the distance work possibilities and non-specified recruitment

  • Restructuring or consolidation of agencies in order to ensure higher quality services and more efficient use of resources:

  • The creation of joint agencies took place in four areas: the environment, agriculture and food, transport, education and youth.
  • The analysis of the formation of a joint agency in the field of land, regional and planning
  • Analysis of the consolidation of state laboratories
  • Analysis of the consolidation of document management and archiving
  • Analysis of the consolidation of basic ICT services in general government sector (servers, computer workplace services)

  • Development and efficient provision of people-centred public services, including e-services.

  • Promoting the flexible recruitment of government employees in the regions (outside the capital).

  • Creation of common service centres for state agencies (one stop shop) in the regions (except for Tallinn and Tartu).

  • To make better use of national budget funds, the government switched to accrual-based budgeting, and in 2020, to performance-based budgeting.

  • Moving government jobs outside the capital.

  • In order to reduce the administrative burden on businesses, the so-called zero bureaucracy initiative was implemented, in order to reduce the burden on companies when dealing with the government.

  • In order to reduce the state's internal bureaucracy, public sector institutions identified and reduced activities without added value.

  • The centralisation of governmental support services was implemented, i.e., the consolidation of financial, personnel and salary accounting in the Shared Service Center.

  • Switching to e-invoicing, which reduced the workload with pdf and paper invoices, saved on costs and made it possible to improve the quality of accounting.

  • Cross-use of databases was introduced in governmental statistical work and data collection, which reduced the administrative burden on reporting agents. 

  • The government's ownership policy was designed with the aim of receiving the maximum income from the state's business activities; the state's joint personnel and salary policy was designed to ensure internal justice; and the state's real estate policy was further coordinated.

  • A new concept of the Government of the Republic Act was drafted, which creates better bases for the organisation of government work and more flexible governmental management.

  • The public tasks of the government and its organisations were reviewed, redundant and unnecessary activities and their organisation in institutions were identified. ​

  • A project to create one-stop-shops was launched to improve access to public services in the regions and save on real estate costs, since the public authorities or public organisations from different areas of government could all be located a single service centre.

Contact

Ms. Gerly Elbrecht, Public Administration and Public Service Department  

+372 611 3625

 [email protected]

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Last updated: 11.11.2022

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