ESTONIA Developing the state portal eesti.

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What did the commitment seek to achieve, and why is this important? A strong focus of the Estonian OGP action plan is developing public e-services. The ultimate goal is to make government easy and accessible to everybody. The first step in doing this has been to improve the functionality and user-friendliness of the official state portal EESTI.EE. The aim of the improvement project is to make EESTI.EE into the primary government information gateway for Estonian residents and entrepreneurs, creating a one-stop public service site for all. How did you go about implementing the commitment? Who were the key advocates both within and outside of government during the implementation phase? The motivation behind the initiative was both that people increasingly expect a rising level of user-friendliness from government e-services and that private sector online services, such as banks, have already started offering similar services for some time. Thus, user expectations and needs were the driving force the initiative arose bottom-up. How have citizens benefitted from this reform? If possible, please include evidence of results or uptake, e.g. links to news coverage, quotes, and/or quantitative measures, such as web analytics. Citizens can now personalize the site according to their own preferences and most used services. This new service was launched in August 2013, although some beta versions had been out already since the beginning of the year. The idea of the personalized view is that after the user logs in securely with his or her Estonian national eID (either ID-card or mobile ID)1, all of his or her core data and updates on any government services being used will be available on one web-page. Each line of information also comes with links to related e-services in order to allow the user to easily move on to additional data or transactions that he or she might need. For example, up-to-date information will be listed about a persons family, real estate or business matters; notifications about his/her documents validity and various due deadlines (e.g. taxes or applications); basic health insurance related information etc. In this way there is no need for people to waste time searching and navigating the portal any longer for core services, allowing the desired services to be reached quickly and conveniently.
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See http://e-estonia.com/components/electronic-id-card and http://e-estonia.com/components/mobile-id for more info on Estonian nation-wide eID system.

 After the launch of the personal view, the feedback from users was very positive most users found the new and improved service allowed them to get things done fast. In particular, the newly added notifications service proved popular. The service lets users know when they need to do things like renew their drivers license, vaccinate a pet, or file taxes. The thinking behind the notifications service was that, while the responsibility to meet deadlines like this might lie with the citizen, theres no reason why the government cant take a step towards users and provide information they need. This makes it easier for people to avoid getting into trouble with deadlines, ensuring more people comply with the law ultimately benefiting the government in the long run. What did NOT go as planned, and what did you learn from this? What is the unfinished business, e.g. how might you take this work forward in your next OGP action plan? There is still much to do to make EESTI.EE even more personalized. For example, offering customized page views based on smart analytics of a persons activities in the portal and other available data. The government is also currently preparing to take the state portal to a mobile platform. This will make the personal data and service view even more accessible. Its things like this that often make a difference to a citizens relationship with the government. They might not seem too big-of-a-deal at first glance. Yet, in the end they improve individual experience helping, in the end, to bring government closer to people. For more information: Siim Sikkut, Government Office of Estonia, siim.sikkut@riigikantselei.ee Annex 1: Demo-version picture of new personal view in Estonian state portal EESTI.EE