Lithuanian e-government

Workshop with MicroLink Group and SAP AGVilniusJan 24, 2001

MicroLink’s overview

• The largest Baltic IT and internet company• Sales in 2000 – EUR 60 million (2 m EUR in Lithuania)• 750 employees, 70 in Lithuania• The only truly pan-Baltic IT company• No. 1 system integrator, No. 1 PC maker, No. 1 internet

provider, No. 1 portal in the Baltics• Activities in Lithuania: Delfi Internet, Delfi portal, sales of PCs

and telecom equipment, large IT projects• Major growth planned in Lithuania for Y2001• Lithuania is becoming the Baltics’ biggest IT and internet market

by 2003

Overview of SAP AG

• 3rd largest software company in the world• Global company with headquarters in Germany• The world’s leading enterprise and government

software maker• Sales in 9 months 2000 - 5.5 billion EUR• 24000 employees• SAPMarkets: Subsidiary of SAP focusing on B2B and

internet• Clients in Lithuania: Ekranas,

Today’s agenda

• Lithuania.com: MicroLink’s vision in e-government issues with experience from Estonia and Latvia• Allan Martinson, CEO MicroLink

• Riina Einberg, project manager, MicroLink Systems

• Antra Zalite, head of Enterprise Applications, MicroLink/Fortech

• Teleconference with Estonian prime minister’s IT advisor Linnar Viik

• SAP’s vision and experience in e-government. E-procurement and citizen portal• Natalia Parmenova, business development manager, SAPMarkets

Lithuania.com:How to dot-com a country ?

Why to change ?

• A state is a service provider for its citizens• Citizens pay for the service by paying taxes and

expect the most value for their money• A small nation-state is an “expensive hobby”• E-government’s only goal is to help the state to fulfil

its functions better

• E-government must deliver more value for less money for its citizens

Why e-government ?

• All previous historic improvements of governments and societies required high investments, but gave slow and limited return

• Information era and internet open possibilities for radical improvements with relatively little investment, but quick and virtually unlimited return.

• A government is a large information-processing task. • MicroLink’s estimate: 20% of Estonian state budget is spent on

gathering, managing and keeping information

3 crucial components of e-society

•Access

•Attitude

•Content & Services

Access and availability

• If there are no people in the Net, e-goverment makes no sense

• Metcalfe’s Law: The value of the network is a square of the number of people in the network (N²)• 100000 people in the Net can make 10 billion connections.

• 1 million people in the Net can make 1 trillion connections

• E-society starts to evolve fast at 10% penetration• Lithuania is just passing this mark

Internet penetration in the Baltics

29%

38%

10%

17%

5%

10%

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

40%

Estonia Latvia Lithuania

have used internetin last 6 months,Feb 2000

Estimate Dec 2000

How to boost penetration ?

• Estonian experience: The government cannot force people to the Net, but it can help to take down barriers

• Booster No. 1: Connect the public sector• Booster No. 2: Liberate telecom market fast

regardless of what the old telco says

Connect the public sector

• Estonian experience:• Tiger Leap project (since 1996)

• 100% of schools with computers (25 children per PC)

• 100% of schools with internet connection (75% with permanent connection)

• 16 m EUR spent in 4 years

• 100% of public sector connected• 20000 workplaces connected

• EEBone (govt.), Village Road (local auth.) projects

• ~100 public internet points all over Estonia

Liberate telecom sector

• Estonian free telecom market – first in the Baltics, but Lithuania not far away (2003)

• Impact was felt already in autumn 1999 (free internet)• Internet usage jumped >50% in one month (October 1999)

• Internet dial-up traffic per capita (minutes, 1999)• Est 496 Lat 60 Lit 70

• Internet dial-up minutes in month (ML estimate):• Estonia 60 million

• Latvia+Lithuania 50 million

New initiative – beat Finland by 2003

• Private initiative to be announced in February• Main sponsor – Hansabank (100 m EEK = 25 m LTL

over 3 years)• Target – to beat Finland in internet penetration in 3

years (become No. 1 in Europe ?)• Target groups: bluecollars, farmers, pensioners etc

• MicroLink’s initiative: bring most companies online by 2003

3 crucial components of e-society

•Access

•Attitude

•Content & Services

Attitude & marketing

• An often-forgotten component of building e-society

• Internet needs face and name• Attitude comes from opinion leaders• Estonian examples:

• Linnar Viik, Prime Minister’s IT advisor – Tiger Tour

• Prime Minister Mart Laar – paperless government meetings, e-cards by Christmas

• President Lennart Meri – patron of the Tiger Leap project

Mart Laar’s Christmas card ‘2000

3 crucial components of e-society

•Access

•Attitude

•Content & Services

Content & Services

• The most important component

• The actual reason to be in the Net• Private sector creates most of the content

• E-banking (~25% users among adult population)

• Leasing (25% of the leasing deals over net)

• Mobile parking (10000 users in Tallinn)

• New media

• E-billing (gas, electricity, telephone)

• Business-to-business applications

• etc

Core principles of building e-government

• Focus on well-defined projects, not to do all things for all people

• Huge effect can gained through small efforts (80:20 principle)

• Try not to overregulate, even in the government – all the best things in e-government have been done “accidentially” and based on local initiative

• ... but have clearly defined power and vision center with “licence to kill” overseeing the e-government

Government portal

• All government branches, municipalities in the Net• All officials have e-mail and must answer to it• Very wide range of government information is public in real time• Required by the Public Information Law (2000)• Centralized government portal (www.gov.ee)

• Next step: Personalized citizen portal • Oriented on public services, not just listing contacts• Government IS a portal with physical front-end, not vice versa

E-tax department

• Classical case of “unpunished initiative”• Online tax declarations in cooperation with banks in

2000 (7% of the declarations presented online)• Reduced time of inputting and checking data

• Less time spent by taxpayers

• Outsourced server management• Tax department’s server and databases managed by MicroLink

Systems following public tender

Paperless government

• (Almost) all state institutions use internet-based document and workflow management systems

• The cabinet of ministers decided to get rid of papers in August 2000• Project completed in 1 month• Cost: 0.7 m LTL• Payback time: 1.5 years

Digital signature

• Law adopted in December 2000• The government will launch own PKI authority +

private ones• No real use of digital signature yet• The private sector (banking) will probably be early

adopter• E-notarius

E-elections

• Current experience: Election results gathered and published using internet (parliamentary and local elections in 1999)

• Law on elections amended in 2000, allowing next general and local elections to be held over internet (2002-2003)

State registers

• Current status: no effective central administration of registers, limited cross-usage

• Project on creation of uniting layer of registers allowing online cross-usage (XML)

• One register fully managed by private company (Estonian Central Depositary)

E-procurement

• Goal to move all government tenders to internet by 2003

• More on e-procurement ideas in SAPMarkets presentation

Conclusion• There is no manual on building an e-government:

Everybody is looking for answers• Lithuanian e-government concept is very clear and

radical document• No other Baltic government has been so open in

discussions of the e-government concepts

• We wish you all the luck and are anxious to participate...

• ... because we like it !