Baltic States – CIS, Estonia, Forum, Legislation, Technology, Transport

At the hands-on training on the creation and exchange of electronic documents.

Practical seminar on the use of electronic documents and digital signature was held on 21 November in Kingisepp, Leningrad oblast of the Russian Federation, in the framework of e-G2C  project «Increasing the capacity of local authorities to provide electronic services in the border area of Ida-Viru County and Leningrad region». Municipalities of  "Kingisepp region", "Slantsy region" and the Narva City Government together with their  archives are partners in this international project. Partners in this project are also "e-Governance Academy" (the lead partner), the NGO "E-signature without Borders", the Centre for e-government ITMO, the Narva BAS Foundation.

The project aims to develop prototypes of two cross-border electronic services- providing information on burials and records of employment. These services are the most demanded by residents of border areas, which means that they should the first to be transferred into modern digital services.

The seminar presented the outputs of the project and several options for electronic interaction between citizens, authorities and archives of border cities in Estonia and Russia. The seminar was organized as a workshop where four specialists in the areas covered by the project as well as three border archives directors were the panelists.

In particular, Ants Liimets, the head of the Narva City Municipality Office and the City Secretary  told the audience about the electronic document set-up  in the Narva City Government, shared the positive and negative experiences of its implantation in Narva.

Vitali Sergejev from Narva BAS Foundation introduced the EstLatRus programme and the  E-G2C project. He also initiated discussions on further development of archives e-services through a new joint project.

Marina Zubareva (Slantsy).

Jüri Voore, the specialist in identification cards of Certification Centre of Estonia,  delivered  an on-line  master-class on ID-cards practical use  in creation of electronic signatures and digital workflow between cross-border archives. This was made possible thanks to the fact that 16 archivists from the project pilot archives received personal test ID card with valid certificates and readers for their digital usage. The Russian participants were among the first to receive the such test ID cards, designed for non-residents in Estonia. And since Estonia became the first country in the world that has developed and begun to issue such ID cards, the e-G2C project and its direct beneficiaries, archivists from border archives, also became the world's first owners of such ID cards. But so far the their usage is limited only  to test environment.

Directors of border archives – Andres Kustola (Narva), Rima Zharkova (Kingisepp) and Marina Zubareva (Slantsy) highlighted the work of their archives. They shared their experience of joint activities within this project and the prospects for further cooperation between them.

Jaak Rand, expert on archives digitalization, introduced to the participants the principles of electronic archives set-up in Estonia and prospects of archival sector development in view of its increasing digitalization.