Systematic digital signing in Estonian e-Government processes: Influencing factors, technologies, change management

Abstract

In Estonia, digital signing started with the Digital Signatures Act already as early as in 2000. The aim to make digital signing and its use with various types of documents more convenient and efficient has had a high priority in the state’s e-Governance initiative. In this article we provide a study of the systematic introduction and use of digital signatures with documents related to decision-making processes and analyze the factors which influence this. We look at local governments as a major use case and provide an overview of the digital signing statistics for local government document exchange. The article highlights the differences related to the size and administrative capacity of the local governments as well as their readiness to transition into the information society.