Riigikontroll

The National Audit Office audited the use of the aid allocated from the structural funds of the European Union (hereinafter EU aid) in the information technology (IT) area of the state. The National Audit Office checked whether the distribution of funds for the development of the information society has been balanced and transparent, and whether the distribution of aid is adequately supervised. Balanced distribution of aid means that development of the information society entails paying attention (and ideally providing proportional funding) to information systems aimed at the public sector, private business as well as citizens. The National Audit Office sees a situation as transparent if all applicants can obtain the reassurance that preferring certain projects to others was justified. The National Audit Office is of the opinion that the state is too focussed on financing the IT developments aimed at the state when distributing aid for the implementation of the National Information Society Development Plan, and not paid enough attention on improving the competitiveness of companies and supporting the IT development projects that are aimed at the third sector. Also, the selection of IT projects has not been transparent and the state’s supervision of the implementation of the projects has been regarded as a formality.