July 1999

Overview: Estonia

A comprehensive survey on the field (Survey of Internet Homepages of Estonian Institutions, (http://www.ciesin.ee/UNDP/tigerleap/) was carried out by BMF Gallup Media (Balti Meediateabe AS) from 20 November to 7 December 1998 with the objective to analyse institutional Internet homepages in Estonia. The survey was commissioned and financed by the United Nations-Estonia.

Amongst others conclusions, it is stated that the number of working unique institutional homepages in Estonia is 1755 and there are 37688 different registered institutions and enterprises concluding that 5% of the Estonian enterprises and institutions have their own homepages.

Attention is paid to the fact that the institutions (non-profit by nature) are better represented in the Internet compared to the for-profit enterprises. The highest representation of the organisations is of the organisations operating in the following sectors:

• government-related institutions (88% of the total number);
• computer-related industry (77%);
• institutions of higher and profession education (40%).

More than 10% of the registered enterprises, institutions are present in the Internet in the following sectors:

• secondary education 24%;
• accommodation 19%;
• state and local governmental institutions (in general) 16%;
• travel agencies 15%;
• publishing 14%;
• advertising 13%;
• financial services 12%.

As the result of the survey it is admitted that the best performance of public administration organisations is shown by state institutions, followed by cities and other local governments.

The main target groups are the general population and both domestic and foreign tourists. For the general population, various information is provided for communication with officials (contact data, introduction, opening hours, duties performed). The freely distributed infopapers take also part in the process of informing. Many local municipalities are using Internet for promoting the whole region in addition to municipality. More interactive features are used for presenting the region, especially in bigger towns. English is used in more than 50% of pages. (The Estonian Tiger Leap into the 21 st Century)

The representation of public administration organisations on the Interent is as following (June 28, 1999):

• all of 15 county governments operate a web-page;
• 37 cities out of 47 (73%) operate a web-page;
• 28 other local governments of 206 (13,6 %) operate a web-page.

*Hospitals only
** There are 602 public libraries (495 of them in rural regions) and 115 specialized and scientific libraries in Estonia in 1997. The number does not include school libraries.