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Estonian border crossing system GoSwift expanding to Russia

02.07.2012

TALLINN, Jul 02, BNS  -  The GoSwift system of online booking of slots in the border-crossing queue that has been in operation on Estonia's eastern border since last August will be launched later this month also at the checkpoints of Russia for vehicles about to cross the border into Estonia, the daily Postimees said.

"The GoSwift system will go into operation at all checkpoints on the Russian-Estonian border in July: at Shumilkino-Luhamaa, Kunitshnaya Gora-Koidula, and Ivangorod-Narva. The pilot project will be launched in Russia in collaboration between [the national border agency] Rosgranitsa and OOO GoSwift.ru," said Hannes Plinte, board member of the company OU Girf that runs GoSwift.

Rosgranitsa is responsible in Russia for the development of border checkpoints and ensuring of smooth crossing of the border. GoSwift.ru was established by Girf together with a Russian partner.

On the Estonian-Russian border GoSwift has organized the crossing of the border by vehicles during 11 months, since August 1 last year. During that time the system has directed 600,000 vehicles to checkpoints.

Also Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Finland have shown interest in the system, said Rando Kruusmaa, deputy head of the department for migration and border guard policy at the Estonian Interior Ministry.

Plinte didn't rule out that Russia might start using GoSwift in the future also on its border with Finland and Latvia.

"For this system to be implemented you need a problem, a necessity, a legislative basis enabling the application of electronic queueing, and the presence of political will. When these preconditions are met we are ready to offer our experience and service," he said.

At this point only Estonia and Russia have written e-queueing into their law. Because of the difference in legal requirements the version of GoSwift applied in Estonia and GoSwift.ru are not identical, one of the differences being, for instance, that the set of data forwarded to make a booking contains less information in Russia.

GoSwift enables users to book a time slot in the border-crossing queue, after which the holder of the booking has to show up at the checkpoint at the required time to cross the border without further delay. Half of the throughput volume of checkpoints remains set aside for the physical queue of vehicles, which also is managed by GoSwift.


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