People are expecting any e-service they use to be quick, easy and secure.
Private sector has long understood this, because they go where the client goes. But public sectors across the world have lagged behind. Public e-services still follow the mentality “you come and find us” or “you have to know which online form you have to fill out”. But there is no need for this. What kind of data do you already have? Maybe it’s already more than enough to offer your services proactively, as soon as a person needs it? Offering public services proactively and when a life event happens requires many steps from the public sector. You need to know what data you have and if it’s up-to-date. The data needs to be handled and stored securely. Different institutions need to work together and share information, so the dirty work of bureaucracy happens without a person being bothered at all.
Why do we use the term „persons“ or “user” instead of „citizen“? Because when we talk about “citizens”, we only look at how to offer public services only to our passport holders. But in a digital world that is no longer the need. Access to cross border services is becoming more relevant by the day. For example, think of a tourist needing access to prescription drugs while on holiday in another country? Or having an overview of the whole journey when a logistics company driver crosses five borders in order to deliver Amazon packages? Since people move across borders, services need to as well. And when we talk about people, we also mean companies and other private entities. They are run by people too, after all.
What value do we bring?
PwC Estonia has a long partnership with different public institutions in and outside of Estonia helping governments on their journey to improving public services.
We have an in-depth understanding of how to map out what users need and how to build services based on that.
We can also bring together knowledge from other countries and their best practices.
A strong international network
PwC has experience in digital government projects in dozens of countries and therefore we have easy access to talent and ideas from across the world. We can pool those best practices to create the best solutions for you.
Government know-how
We understand the intricacies of the public sector and the responsibility that lies in making public services that are built for the public good.
Strong network of key players in the Estonian digitalisation success story
Our team as themselves played a role in building the Estonian digitalisation success story or has worked closely together with public and private sector actors who continuously create the next solutions for Estonia.
Variety of additional in-house services
Sometimes you need to look at the legal framework of a digital service or implications that may rise from using data. Or you need to look at several areas of the government at the same time. We have specialists who have experience in all areas of the public sector. So you can be sure that we have looked at your problem from all angles and offered a full solution.
A selection of our services
- Digital government strategy consulting
- Digital government business process analysis and redesign
- Digital government innovation through service design
Digital government strategy consulting
Our digital government advisory team has more than 10 years of experience advising public sector institutions on digital innovation and digital government strategy. Our team members have an extensive experience of working in and for the public sector and have been engaged in the strategic planning at the ministry level and led, among other things, the preparation of the Digital Agenda 2030 for Estonia. Therefore, our team is well aware of the needs and plans of the Estonian state are for the development of our digital societies in the next decade. Our team is ready to advise governments on their digitalisation journeys.
Digital government business process analysis and redesign
Our team of process analysts have an extensive knowledge of public sector business processes and experience in re-designing outdated AS-IS processes into futureproof TO-BE processes to meet government's targets of innovation, digitalisation and efficiency. Our team will work side by side with your key experts to map and document the existing processes according to the Business Model and Notation methodology that is a widely used and acknowledged approach in the Estonian public sector. In close collaboration and co-creation with your team, opportunities for process digitalisation will be identified and future processes modelled along with guidelines for implementing the renewed process.
Digital government innovation through service design
To kickstart the government digitalisation journey by designing digital services or you may also call them e-services, our team is ready to start the collaboration and co-creation with your team by using various engaging service design methods. Firstly, our team will gain an understanding of why and to whom this service is important. Then, we will talk to the users to understand their needs, wants and wishes, as well as gather information on the bottlenecks they have experienced using this or similar services previously. Our team will use the users' insights to build the new digital service concept or renew an existing service concept together with an interactive prototype. Through user testing, feedback collection and iterations, the digital service prototype will be improved to meet the needs of users. The new digital service concept will come with guidelines and implementation roadmap.
Our previous success stories
- Case Study: PwC Estonia - Follow-up analysis of the company’s data card on the eesti.ee website
- Case Study: PwC Estonia - Enhancing the efficiency of Estonia’s e-services
Case Study: PwC Estonia - Follow-up analysis of the company’s data card on the eesti.ee website
Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications
The Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications requested:
To update and redesign an e-service - company data card - on state information portal eesti.ee for entrepreneurs. The minimal viable product of the e-service - company data card - launched in early 2023 and it needed updating.
To include at least 25 entrepreneurs and 15 public sector authorities into the e-service redesign process to use user-centered design approach and build a service that meets the needs of entrepreneurs and takes into account the data that public sector authorities can interface with eesti.ee website
The aim of the project was to bring together as much company related data as possible from various state information systems into single window - eesti.ee for entrepreneurs, so that the entrepreneur would be able to get an overview of what data the state has about the company - for example, number of assets in various categories like material assets (buildings, land, cars), biological assets, intellectual property, value of company’s financial assets, etc.
The solution
PwC developed a detailed and updated e-service solution with interactive prototype that resembles the eesti.ee website (including the creation of a description of further IT development tasks) for the company data card which:
is intended for entrepreneurs of the eesti.ee website (managed by the Information System Authority of Republic of Estonia).
considers the needs of the target group (i.e., entrepreneurs) - that were identified during several user-centered inclusion workshops where the data-related needs and wants of entrepreneurs were mapped by using creative methods and the UX and UI design of the e-service was further validated with entrepreneurs during the usability testing sessions of the interactive prototype.
considers the technological capabilities of the involved public institutions.
The result:
A better understanding of what kind of data and how much data entrepreneurs want to access on eesti.ee
An interactive prototype that visualises the user journey and the content of updated company data card.
An updated company data card e-service solution for entrepreneurs that will be accessible for all Estonian entrepreneurs on eesti.ee website by the end of 2024, when all related and necessary IT developments have been completed.
Case Study: PwC Estonia - Enhancing the efficiency of Estonia’s e-services
Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications
Our role
PwC mapped and analysed the business processes of 20 existing e-services from 9 public sector institutions. Recognising the areas for improvement, new e-services were introduced.
Setting the scene
Ninety-nine percent of Estonia’s public services are available online. The digital society started investing in IT solutions, beginning with e-Governance, in 1997. Today, citizens can vote online, file their taxes in just 3-5 minutes and the efficiency of security services has increased.
In 2014, Estonia’s Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications recognised a gap in their services. With no standardised process for developing new e-services, citizens were met with varying qualities of service and redundant, complicated business processes.
How we helped
PwC and partner Trinidad Consulting worked with Estonia’s Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications to implement a proof-of-concept pilot project. The project was two-fold: to increase the quality of business processes of the existing services and to plan efficient and user-friendly new services. The Ministry’s priority was to train the officials in charge of the e-services development on service design and IT analysis, helping the State to become a better planner, smarter customer and dependable partner for consultants and IT developers.
Using an As Is analysis approach, PwC mapped and analysed the business processes of 20 existing e-services from nine public sector institutions. During this stage, Chief Digital Officer Janek Rozov said, “it has become evident that there is no fixed role within institutions that would have the responsibility to administer information about services”.
Recognising the areas for improvement, new e-services were introduced. The implementation of the new user-centered programs focused on training service owners to evaluate, improve and create more efficient e-services. Participants were trained in modern and freeware tools and methodologies for designing future services.
Based on their experience, Estonia can offer advice to other governments and institutions. “The coordination role in the development of user friendly services has to be established centrally. Before IT development, an As Is and To Be analysis of the business processes and services has to be done. Supporting regulation has to be in place,” said Mr. Rozov.
Impact and potential
The project emphasised the need for standardised processes in order to improve efficiency. As a result, services were merged and processes for businesses were streamlined. For example, more than 3,000 companies can now file their data in their company portal, instead of separately inputting it into a government information system. And a building permit can now be obtained via one unique process, as opposed to the former five services.
The project brought awareness of the similarities across the sector, and allows for more collaboration and less redundancy. There was a presumption that most e-service authorities were experienced in service design and development, but the project proved otherwise.
Citizens and administration services both benefited from this project. The new implementations save time, money and complication.
Cooperation partners
In the past decade public services have been moving from a multi-shop service design to one-stop-service design. Now it is time to move on to a no-stop service design1. This means that a person does not have to know what agency to contact in order to get access to a public service. Services are triggered by life events. This requires a complete shift in how we think about offering public services to people and how we work together to offer seamless services.
The Estonian government has come out with a plan to do this and they call it „personal state“ which is a comprehensive and fascinating road map to becoming a more citizen-centric government. You can read more about it here.
1 Scholta, H. (2019). From one-stop shop to no-stop shop: An e-government stage model
First off, it’s important to know what kind of data you already have about your users and is it up-to-date. Since public institutions are collecting more and more data, many are struggling to have a proper overview of it: knowing what you have, when to veal up and delete irrelevant information and how to secure growingly complicated data. And then there are new opportunities. Sharing public sector data with the private sector so people can seamlessly move between public and private service providers. Think of your private doctor having quick and easy access to all the RELEVANT medical information about you before your visit to her office?
It is also then important to “open” the data you have so it can be accessed for innovative projects and reused to offer more services. You can have a look at all the data that is publicly accessible in Estonia here.
There is so much data that we need quick, secure and easy access to. Holding onto it and keeping it in-house (or in your computer) no longer makes sense. But what kind of cloud services to use? And how to motivate moving over to the cloud? Several countries (a few examples: Estonia, UK, Malta) have their own strategies on this and based on your client needs and security risks, we can help you find the best solution.
Using more and more data, having more devices - that all adds up. ICT is already contributing up to 4% to total emissions. So governments need to think more about how to minimise the effects of their servers' use, work stations of their public sector employees and how to best regulate ICT hardware producers. You can read more about Estonia’s green ICT plans and listen to a podcast episode.
People trust the public sector with their data only when you keep it secure and use it only for what has been clearly stated. Trust with data is hard to build and easy to break. And in a world where cyberattacks are becoming more complicated and frequent by the day, we cannot afford mishandling of our people’s data.
Read more about current topics in cyber security on the global PwC cyber security web page.
Our people
Tarmo Meresmaa
Kaidi-Kerli Kärner
Elis Raudkett
Konstantin Jermoshin
Eveli Glinjanski
Merilin Köörna
