Latvian Economics Ministry to watch employees’ screen time / Article

The Ministry of Economics thinks that given the relatively low productivity of public sector workers in Latvia, drastic changes are needed.

“There has been a lot of talk so far. Everything has been done, but it has not produced the necessary results. This is an attempt to go, yes, I agree, a very aggressive method. It could be quite challenging to continue with all this, and it certainly will be. But if we do not change our approach to everyday things, we will not get results,” says Viktors Valainis, Minister of Economics (Greens and Farmers Union).

The main objective of the new approach is to understand “whether the duties of the ministry’s staff are duplicated and whether resources can be redirected to something more necessary”.

The software used at the Ministry since the beginning of the year was developed in Latvia.

Artis Rozentāls, the CEO of DeskTime, said that it is used by “tens of thousands” of employees in different countries around the world. However, DeskTime is not yet used by anyone else in the public sector.

How does it work in practice? An application is installed on the computer, which records all the activities that the worker performs on the computer. “It records what software is used on the computer, what websites are visited, how much time is spent on them. How long a document is worked on. And then all the pauses are also shown,” says Rozentāls.

“DeskTime has been installed at the Ministry of Economics and its subordinate institutions at a cost of around EUR 10,000. The ministry hopes that if the implementation is successful, the practice could be adopted by other public institutions.

DeskTime will be implemented for more than 300 users at the Ministry of Economics, the Central Statistical Bureau, the Investment and Development Agency of Latvia, the Latvian National Accreditation Bureau, and the Public Asset Manager Possessor Ltd.

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