Latvian government approves €4 million plan to overhaul digital public services

Latvia's Cabinet of Ministers decided on Tuesday to launch a project aimed at improving digital public services tied to common life situations faced by residents. The total cost of the project will not exceed €4 million, with €3.4 million covered by the European Regional Development Fund and up to €600,000 coming from the state budget.

Problems the project aims to fix

According to the project's authors, Latvia's current ecosystem of electronic and digital services is scattered and inconsistent, lacking a unified approach to how such services are designed and delivered. As a result, the overall range of available services appears disorganized and difficult to navigate.

One specific shortcoming concerns the "latvija.gov.lv" portal, which lacks a standardized structure for organizing public services according to the life situations residents actually encounter. Notifications sent by government institutions are also described as unclear and hard to follow.

Two practical examples were highlighted. First, notarized powers of attorney currently cannot realistically be used in digital form. Second, preparing medical certificates confirming cause of death remains a manual, time-consuming process, partly because the relevant data is not linked to the national health information system or to patients' electronic health records.

Scope of the project

The plan involves developing information and communication technology solutions that would allow public administration to function based on machine-readable, automated data exchange. The project's authors note that improving ICT-based services could also resolve several other identified shortcomings in Latvia's digital service landscape.