Aims of the state reform
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Local governments have become stronger and the interests of communities are represented at the local government level.
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Tasks that are local governmental in nature and enable local decision-making have been transferred from the state level to the local governments together with the necessary and sufficient resources.
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The organisation of regional administration has been made more efficient and the provision of public services has been ensured in all the regional centres.
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Government jobs paying competitive salaries are available outside the capital.
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Modern management principles have been introduced and management quality has improved at all levels.
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Central government agencies have become more efficient, duplication has been reduced and the public tasks has been consolidated.
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Progress has been made in consolidating the support services of public authorities and savings in administrative costs have been achieved.
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The work of the Government of the Republic has been organised to be more flexible and steps have been taken to reduce the volume of legislation.
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Improving the efficiency of public administration supports the achievement of economic growth, the administrative burden on businesses and residents has been reduced and public services are provided in a more user-friendly way.
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Modern principles of inclusion have been introduced.
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The national and local governments are open to new ideas
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 (below 12%)
- The proportion of government sector expenditures to GDP will not increase (below 39.3%)
- The government sector compensations for employees / GDP will not increase (below 11.3%)
The Government has decided to pursue with organisational consolidation analysis and primary action plan for 2019-2023. Organisational inventory has been conducted and is continuous to avoid inefficient (hybrid, small) organisational forms, to identify the most efficient forms of activity and to create real synergy between organisations. The governmental organisations are constantly striving for better management systems and more effective structures and uses of resources. There have been various consolidations in previous years and during the period of 2019-2023 the ministries are analysing and preparing the mergers in the following areas: education, environment, land, region and planning, agriculture and food.
The consolidation of support services has brought higher quality and more effective services in financial management, HR services (payroll for 169 state agencies, central training unit), grant administration (managing authority for entire grants system, implementation of grant schemes, reports and payments, development of grants IT system), state claims (claims from court decision, alimony subsidy etc.) and public procurement (service provided centrally for 35 state agencies).
Considering better regional balance, the Government has motivated to relocate state employees outside the capital in 2017-2019 (around 90% of the set goal) and ruling Government has decided on flexible recruitment measures to increase regional distribution of state financed positions. One of the measures to assure better governance in the state, the one-stop shop project has been initiated. First one stop shop was opened in 2019 and the goal of the project is to open state one-stop-shops in every county by 2023. The common service environment includes also the remote workplaces for government sector employees to complement more balanced regional policy.
- Restructuring or consolidation of institutions in order to ensure higher quality services and the 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 country's internal bureaucracy, public sector institutions mapped their 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.
- 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.
Last updated: 04.03.2021
