The City of Good Thoughts?

Tartu introduces itself as the City of Good Thoughts. Tartu has invented and applied solutions in public administration that have made governance more transparent, efficient and innovative.

One of such examples is the Digital Document Management System. The peculiarity lies in the fact that the system was not limited to the requirements of the law but also fulfils the tasks of simplifying activities of civil servants and citizens.

Application of the DDMS started at 2001 and the system was introduced in May 2002. By today paper handling has already given way to electronic administration. In communication between the city's institutions, paper documents are not being used any more, as a rule. All documents are reflected in the DDMS. To keep it functional, we provided almost 400 people the access to the DDMS.

The greatest benefit of the solution is that everybody can see and link necessary documents, which reduces dubbing, increases work speed and, documents do not get lost any more. To compare the current situation to the pre-DDMS era, most significant changes have occurred in civil servants' work speed, especially in concerting documents. The system we use does not require civil servants sitting at their desks. It is possible to use the DDMS at your home PC or laptop, wherever you are where Internet or GPRS is available. The members of the City Government actively take advantage of this option and it substantially increases their mobility.

Citizens benefit from Tartu DDMS through the principle of publicizing and faster processing of their requests, which may also be digitally delivered. Our DDMS is able to receive and register also digitally signed documents.