October 17, 2019
Estonia, a country widely regarded as a truly digital society, has made yet another innovative leap by launching proactive family and parental benefits. This means that parents of a newborn no longer need to apply for benefits but receive a proactive proposal from the government for the benefits they are entitled to, which they simply have to confirm.
Egon Veermäe, Director of the Social Insurance Board of Estonia, says that the Social Insurance Board seeks to offer simple, proactive and user-friendly services to residents. The Social Insurance Board of Estonia disburses €44 million in family and parental benefits monthly.
“In developing new services, we act based on the principle that if government organizations already possess the necessary information, we do not ask for it over and over again from the residents. We call new services proactive because, when a child is born, the entry made in the population register will activate all following services without the parents having to apply,” adds Veermäe.
Ats Albre, head of Nortal’s delivery in Estonia, describes proactive services as a unique innovation — not only in Estonia but also worldwide.
“To provide truly seamless services for the Social Insurance Board’s customers, an automated system based on complex algorithms operates in the background. This system repeatedly validates data via different registers necessary to approve the benefits and the entitled sums,” Albre adds.
Veermäe also states that the family benefits service is the first (life) event-based service in Estonia, but the organization is committed to moving toward fully proactive services.
This launch is part of a broader strategy that will be executed over the upcoming years — reforming Estonian Social Insurance Board’s services for approximately 700,000 people — which is roughly 20 percent of the country’s distributed annual budget.
Learn more from our case study on proactive public services.