4. In which ways is the initiative creative and innovative?
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The most important innovative features of the e-File are:
First, providing better access to justice, i.e. open Justice to all the involved parties and to the citizens in particular through the public e-File portal.
Second, connecting various information systems enabling to hold data in and add additional information based on harmonised business rules, an innovation in itself already, all in one place.
Third, the fact of holding data all in one place results in its own turn in another innovative feature, that of getting general and consolidated statistics.
Fourth, incorporating the Criminal Records data into the e-File in such a way that Criminal Records’ extracts can be generated automatically from the data of court decisions added by courts.
Fifth, the implementation of the claims’ and state fees’ calculation system, where all the financial claims created by the parties are described in the meta data and the control of payment of the claims will be executed automatically.
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5. Who implemented the initiative and what is the size of the population affected by this initiative?
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The implementer of the e-File project was the Centre of Registers and Information Systems who is still responsible for developing, administrating and maintaining the system today. The afore mentioned tasks are carried out by three in-house teams of the Centre of Registers and Information Systems of Estonia: the business team, the development team and the service maintenance team.
The business team deals with describing and agreeing the functional needs and rules inside the system. The business team is made up of experts with judicial and business analysis background, who understand what is needed from the users point of view. Their task is to make the before mentioned needs understandable for the development team. The business team knows what is going to change in the laws and how this affects the system. The team members plan the activities according to the priorities of the users and manage overall goals that the system needs to achieve and plan the work accordingly. The development team is responsible for implementing the business rules inside the system. This is a classical software development team consisting of technical analysts, programmers and testers. They analyse the business rules coming from the business team and develop the software accordingly. The service maintenance team consists of IT-administrators and other technical staff that is needed to keep the actual system up and running. Their task is to monitor the system 24/7 and do all the maintenance tasks that need to be done regarding the database and application servers.
The e-File system contributing to a more open Justice benefits all the citizens of Estonia, lawyers and , justice field state institutions through its various client systems.
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6. How was the strategy implemented and what resources were mobilized?
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Once the strategic analysis identifying the best solution to opt for, had been carried out, the Government of Estonia decided the development of the e-File project in 2005.
To ensure the presence and inclusion of all the stakeholders from the beginning of the project as well as to facilitate the implementation of the strategy, a Committee of Ministers was formed. The committee included four ministries – Minister of Justice, Minister of Economic Affairs and Communication, Minister of Internal Affairs and Minister of Finance – and was led by the Minister of Justice. The Committee of Ministers was responsible for taking the most high-level decisions regarding the project. The Ministry of Justice of Estonia was appointed the project leader and the Centre of Registers and Information Systems of Estonia, the information technology agency under the aforementioned ministry, the project developer.
The Secretary Generals of the respective ministries, who were under the direct subordination of the Committee of Ministers, were responsible for the overall development of the project. The Coordinative Body, in its own turn under the subordination of the Secretary General Leading Group, was composed of representatives of all the institutions whose information systems were to be connected with the e-File. The Coordinative Body managed the activities of various working groups. Three specialised working groups, including the various stakeholders, were also formed: criminal and misdemeanour procedures; civil and administrative procedures and statistics working groups. The Coordinative Body convenes regularly until now in order to resolve upcoming problems and further develop the e-File when the regulative initiative requires it.
In parallel, the actual development from 2006-2009 and later on the maintenance of the e-File was and still is today carried out by three in-house teams of the Centre of Registers and Information Systems of Estonia: the business team, the development team and the service maintenance team. The business team is made up of six experts with judicial and business analysis background, the development team of twelve technical analysts, programmers and testers and the maintenance team of three IT-administrators and other technical staff. The teams report to the respective heads of departments who report directly to the director of the Centre. Given, the Centre is under the Ministry of Justice of Estonia, the director of the Centre reports to the top management of the Ministry.
To ensure the efficient implementation of such a large-scale project, very good communication is needed between the various stakeholders. One the one hand, this was already to a great extent ensured by the various decision-making groups meeting on a regular basis. On the other hand, each of the four ministries involved in the project was responsible for communication on the project within their jurisdiction, including the subordinating agencies and organisations.
The e-File project has received funding from two sources. The e-File was and still is financed from the State budget. Moreover, in 2008 and then again in 2010, the project received European Union Regional Development Fund funding. The overall development budget, including the human resources cost of the developers (technical analysts, programmers and testers) from 2006 till the end of 2014 raised to around 2,6 million euros. In addition, there are administrative costs related to the project, including, for example, the human resources costs related to the business analysis and maintenance side of the project.
The human resources allocated to develop and maintain the e-File can be divided between the three in-house teams of the Centre of Registers and Information Systems of Estonia. The estimated human resources costs of the before mentioned teams are 100 000 euros, 200 000 euros and 80 000 euros a year respectively.
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7. Who were the stakeholders involved in the design of the initiative and in its implementation?
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Given the development and implementation of the e-File affected many parties, to ensure that all stakeholders were presented and involved from the beginning of the project a committee of Ministers, a Secretary General Leading Group, a coordinative body and working groups at different decision-making levels were formed. All the groups at different hierarchy levels met on a regular basis.
The Committee of ministers included four ministries – Minister of Justice, Minister of Economic Affairs and Communication, Minister of Internal Affairs and Minister of Finance – and was led by the Minister of Justice. The Secretary General Leading Group was composed of the Secretary Generals of the four Ministries. The information flow was guaranteed not only from top to bottom but also from bottom to top level. Indeed, the Coordinative Body, including representatives of all the institutions whose information systems were to be connected with the e-File, e.g Police, Prosecutors’ office, Courts, Lawyers, Jails representative, was the link between the different decision-making levels and hence ensured information flow both ways.
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8. What were the most successful outputs and why was the initiative effective?
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The implementation of the e-File has greatly contributed to a more open justice in Estonia thanks to the following results:
First, the implementation of the system increased the transparency of the justice system on the whole, enabling to monitor and measures the activities of state authorities, including getting consolidated statistics from the same source that cover all the institutions in the justice chain.
Second, the e-File gives legal certainty to citizens, because they see online the proceedings they are involved in and which are initiated against them.
Third, it also saves time and money as data are only entered once, minimising the mistakes made, and communication between parties is immediate and electronic, e.g. one does not have to go to court to initiate a proceeding but can do it via Internet using the Public e-File portal. The elimination of multiple data entries improved data quality, simplifying and making the work of public officials in its own turn more efficient.
Fourth, the e-File also helped to optimize the work processes in public authorities, especially those in courts and police, enabling a completely digital workflow for all the parties to the proceeding
Fifth, the e-File is securer and safer than any paper-system, because the system enables to leave a track of every use of the data in e-File, to identify the misuse of data and data is backed up and located in different servers.
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9. What were the main obstacles encountered and how were they overcome?
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The main obstacle encountered was in the beginning: to get the parties that will all be involved and affected by the new system to understand the existing problem points as well as to reach a common understanding how to resolve the problem. Moreover, once that common understanding was reached, the next obstacle was to reach common grounds on the timescale. It is understandable that different parties have different priorities, given time and budget constraints. To overcome the aforementioned obstacles multiple meetings were needed to communicate to all parties the current situation and its shortcomings and explain the benefits of the effort to create a new central system. The meetings were organised at all levels - minister, mid level managers, specialist - to ensure that everyone affected would feel that they are part of the project rather than feel it is a decision made outside the decision field.
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