Between September 2024 and July 2025, Hendrikson DGE contributed to a comprehensive service design and digital transformation project for the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) process in Estonia. The initiative, led by the Ministry of Climate, aims to modernize the EIA service to make it more user-centred, efficient, automated, and data-driven.
During the project, a thorough analysis of the current EIA process was conducted to identify bottlenecks and improvement needs. Based on these insights, a future-state service model was developed, covering all main stages of the EIA process – screening, scoping, reporting, and follow-up.
The proposed future solution is expected to reduce processing times by 30–60%, significantly shortening the typical 22-month process. Central to the new approach are regulatory simplifications and the development of a digital EIA platform, enabling collaborative work between all stakeholders, form-based reporting, automatic data integration from environmental databases, automated checks, and even AI-supported analysis.
To support implementation, the project also defined performance indicators for the new service and outlined next steps for business and technical analyses to be completed in 2025–2026.
Hendrikson DGE’s role focused on analyzing the current EIA service, co-developing the future service design, and contributing to the roadmap for sustainable implementation. This work supports Estonia’s broader goal of transforming environmental governance through innovation, digitalization, and sustainability-oriented service design.
One key goal is to minimize redundant data requests from applicants: if certain information has already been submitted for a project, different information systems should be able to communicate and share data seamlessly, eliminating the need to re-submit information already provided to the government.