According to Marit Abram, field coordinator at the PPA's Identity and Status Bureau, the issuing of identity documents outside of PPA service offices will make access to the service more flexible and convenient for their clients, the PPA said in a press release on Wednesday.

"We want to find a partner whose service points are located in high-traffic locations, so that people could easily fit picking up documents into their daily errands," Abram explained. "In addition to Estonia, the service provider also has to arrange the issuing of documents in Finland as well, where a large community of Estonian citizens is scattered across the country for whom we can likewise simplify the pickup of their documents."

It is nonetheless vital that the issuing of identity documents is safe and secure, the chief superintendent stressed.

"The external service provider will essentially act as an extension of the state, ensuring that only the correct person is issued their identity document," Abram said. "Therefore it is important we find a secure service provider with this procurement, whose trained staff is capable of identifying the person whose document is being issued."

Applicants will pay a fee for document pickup from the external service provider, the exact price of which will be determined by the outcome of the procurement. The price of this service is among the procurement's assessment criteria, with more points going to service providers offering a lower client price for the pickup service.

The deadline for the submission of tenders is June 6. Should the procurement be successful, the PPA hopes to launch the new service at the end of 2022 or beginning of 2023.

The length of the contract is 5 years, with an estimated cost of €10 million listed in the Procurement Register.

Last year, the PPA issued a total of more than 409,000 identity documents.

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