The Design of the Estonian Governmental Document Exchange Classification Framework

The Digital Agenda 2020 for Estonia aims for a simpler state. A crucial success factor in making the public sector more effective and efficient is achieving a very high degree of paperless official communication. Therefore, in 2015, the Estonian government conducted an assessment of the document exchange between its authorities and institutions. Given the large number of 400 assessed organizations and the complexity of the task, the assessment needed extensive and systematic preparation. Hence, a tailored assessment framework, the so-called document exchange classification framework (DECF), has been developed for this purpose. This article explains the rationales and problems in the design of the DECF. The DECF enables the analysis of document exchanges between different kinds of information systems, via different channels and between different kinds of organizations. The feedback received with the help of the DECF allows for counting the volume and kind of documents that an organisation produces whilst providing a service. It helps to optimise the volume of produced documents and to optimise the service provision layer.