The Estonian Road Administration (ERA) cut administrative costs, improved traffic safety and eased the life of Estonian drivers in a drastic manner, in just a few years.

This change was possible by going through a digital transformation thanks to agreeing to a long-term partnership deal with Finestmedia back in 2015. This case study gives an overview of the transformation and shows it in numbers.

Challenge

The long list of responsibilities show the importance of ERA to the functions of the Estonian state. In 2015, Estonia was already praised globally for its e-services and digitalisation of its government, however the ERA lacked behind. A lot of the procedures by the government agency were done manually. This lead to long queues, human errors and high operational costs.

Once a full life-cycle partnership was started with Finestmedia, the goal was to digitalise and reform the agency in an efficient and convenient way both for the dependents and employees of ERA.

Strategy and Solution

Finestmedia carried out a thorough business analysis and identified opportunities to digitalise and automate several functions formerly carried out via e-mails and manually filled & re-filled Excel sheets.

A project plan and an agile development process was set in place to assemble the different units and registries of the Road Administration into an integrated traffic registry system ARIS2 and the electronic self-service platform used by the Estonian citizens.

Automation of internal processes, plus reducing the need for data handling and paper documents resulted in less manual work for the ERA employees. ARIS2 database is now used by the Estonian Police and Border Guard, the Defence Ministry, the Environmental Board, notaries, leasing companies, car sales portals and many others.

Today the platform notifies citizens when any document (driving licence, technical supervision, medical certificate) related to their permits is about to expire. When the driving licence expires, it is possible to create an application through an e-service and receive a new one by post without having to visit the physical ERA service office.

Previously, citizens had to keep track of the validity of these documents themselves. This change has helped to reduce the amount of related traffic offences and administrative work.

In addition to the process automatisation, Finestmedia has thoroughly analysed and updated the IT architecture of the ARIS2 database for better risk management; to guarantee the security and the reliability of the platform.

Transformation

The co-operation can already be considered a success as the five-year mark is closing in. The Estonian Road Administration has gone through a smooth change management process and successfully digitalised its core services thanks to the help of its IT and Consulting partner Finestmedia. Here are some facts and figures to illustrate this:

1. One of the largest database in Estonia. ARIS2 database contains more than 110 million entries. It holds: over 2.3M documents regarding driving licenses, legal information of 1.2M drivers, data about 1.6M vehicles and 7.9M technical inspections. The database structure uses modern safety and speed protocols to ensure the usability of this very large database.
   
2. Strong userbase. Each month, the platform responds to more than 3 Million inquiries through the Estonian Data Exchange Layer X-Road. There has been 1.5 Million logins in 2019 alone to the e-service platform by its 630000 users (to note, that’s over 50% of the total Estonian population)
   
3. Important Use Case. In 2019, the Estonian Police has made over 700 000 background check inquiries, there’s been 130 000 operations regarding vehicles and over 65 000 permit/ certificate applications. ARIS2 interfaces with several other information systems including national registries (Population Registry, Business Registry, the Police and Border Guard information systems, traffic control and traffic insurance systems, criminal records database, …) and pan-European systems (EUCARIS, TACHOnet, PRÜM, RESPER).

Thanks to the digitalisation and the acquired know-how, ERA has been able to reform their whole operations. They have reduced the annual taxpayer expenditure and now operate fewer offices, employ fewer employees and have cut down on office waste. Thank to automatisation, the current employees can now focus on tasks that demand higher expertise and create more value.

Finestmedia is still continuing to offer expert business & technical analysis and develop & maintain the ARIS2 database and the ERA e-service platform even further.

The Estonian Road Administration (ERA) is a government agency operating within the administrative area of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications. ERA provides public services, which allow road users to use the created road network in a safe and efficient manner, ensuring its preservation and operation. At the same time, the ERA applies requirements to road users and vehicles to ensure a safe and working traffic environment. In an effort to meet the needs of road users, ERA wants to makes use of the best practices applied elsewhere in the world when providing their services. With public transportation management, ERA influences the environmentally-conscious and sustainable behaviour of road users.