CPN31032025 - Slides by Reelika Väljura & Karin Närep

Change Journey of the Ministry of
Culture of Estonia
Reelika Väljaru
Karin Närep
Ministry of Culture of Estonia

Estonian public administration
• Small and efficient
• 11 ministries, State Chancellery
• Very decentralized PA system, incl organizational
development
• The activity based budgeting and new system of
strategic planning in force since 2019-2020
• Digital governance, transparency, and efficiency,
with a strong emphasis on e-government services
and minimal bureaucracy
• e-Tax, e-Health and usage of AI in government
services
• Digital Identity & E-Signature

Ministry of Culture of Estonia
• Flat organizational structure, staff of 90
• 1 policy advisor per area:
• Literature and Publishing
• Theatre
• Music
• ​Fine Arts
• Audiovisual policy and Cinema
• Arhitecture and Design
• ​Folk Art
• Museums
• Libraries
• ​Cultural Heritage Digitalization
• ​Creative Industries
• ​Broadcasting
• ​Cultural Diversity and Integration
(several advisors)
• ​Sports (several advisors)

Governmental area

Our CAF journey

Before CAF-journey
• Main aim of the self-assessment:
• Where are we as organization at the moment? How did we get here?
• Are people happy or do we need changes?
• If we want to have better corporate governance toward our agencies - what to
we need to do that? What kind of capacities we lack at the moment? How do we
measure our success toward better corporate governance?
• Decision to start by top management – strong and visible support to use the
self-assessment results for the further actions

Self-assessment team – involve as much as possible!
• 20 assessors (22% of staff!) - wide
coverage in all levels, ages and
qualifications, top management
involved
• Voluntarily composed
• Training
• Self-assessment
• Consensus meeting
• Discussions on the organizational
strategy

Self-assessment report
• Evidence report
• Composed by project manager
• Based on different documents,
description of the events etc
• Evidence on strenghts (no
improvement areas or scores etc!)
• For self-assessment team voluntary
to use

Results

Main results – improvement journey (1)
• Preparing the vision MOC –
involving all self-assement
team members, but even
more broadly our people.
• Every word carefully
selected ☺

Main results – improvement journey (2)
• Clear expectations to horizontal
and support functions.
• Aims, indicators, expected results
for the years 2022-2025.
• Expectations vs clear and
discussed aims.

Main results – improvement journey (3)
CAF improvement action plan – approved and regular monitoring
of the implementation

Main results – improvement journey (4)
Implemented so far:
• The description of the management principles and processes of the
ministry - approved and implemented, in detailed way introduced to
the whole ministry as well;
• The expectations of the owner - the approved goals and indicators
for the state foundations (incl requirement to implement the quality
management method) – work in process (CAF training for state
museums just provided);
• More involvement of the partners to policy design, incl more
feedback - work in process.

Lessons learned
• Involve as much as possible – in our case it was necessary and
worked!
• Make half of the work by project team – evidence report
• Clear communication – in every step of the process
• Involvement of the top management – the views from the top very
different than from the lower levels, different functional areas acted
like „silos“ in the ministry, no feeling of „our joint“ organization.

Sustainability?
• Still learning how to achieve.
• However – the organizational
strategy is helping to keep the
track!
• CAF improvement plan integrated
into the annual action plan.
• Promoting the CAF self
assessment as an opportunity for
monitoring organizational quality
also within our area of
governance.
• People.

Thank you!
reelika.valjaru@kul.ee
karin.narep@kul.ee