Flak om eGovernment – til både India og Singapore.

eGoverment policies in Norway

We strongly believe that the use of ICT will play a profound role in our government’s main

task. That task is to combine an extended public welfare production and a sound budgetary

policy.

We believe the time has come to think of the digital solutions in the public sector as the

primary solution. Digital channel as default. This new way of thinking requires a new way of

producing and providing government services. That is the reason why my Ministry has

organized national ICT policy and the general modernization and reform work within public

sector in the same unit.

Norway is quite advanced it comes to using electronic services. Our citizens have therefore

high expectations to the government delivering services digitally.

An example of specific ICT policy is that we have moved the development of eGovernment

services from a “let the thousand flowers blossom”-approach, to a more coordinated approach.

Ten years ago we had a very decentralized approach, emphasizing sector and agency

responsibility. Pro’s: it sparks innovation and pins responsibility on all top managers in

government. Con’s: eGovernment services were fragmented. The potential in developing

advanced and user friendly services with information flowing seamlessly between them was

not realized. Some years ago it became clear that stronger policy instruments were needed.

Pursuant to public services being digitalized the demand for interaction between them

increased. At the same time ICT spending in the public sector did increase, which made it

reasonable to consider whether one investment could be reused another place.

All development of public ICT-services is now to be based on some common principles and a

common overall ICT architecture. These principles shall ensure re-use of ICT-solutions where

appropriate, open interfaces between them, accessibility for the users and high security. We

have also identified some common components og this architecture. An infrastructure for

electronic IDs is one of these common backbone components. Having a secure eID allows us

to start exploring new fields for user centric services, for example eHealth. Other common

components include Altinn, which is a digital platform for developing new eGov-services and

also a common portal for all reporting from business to government, as well as three registers:

the national population register, the cadaster register (real estate properties)and the national

register of legal entities.

Another type of policy measure was to set up a government ICT-standardization board. This

board is both recommending the use of particular ICT-standards and it also provides

suggestions for mandatory ICT standards, which then are regulated in a specific regulation to

our Public Administration Act.

We have also introduced specific rules for the budgetary process that require all ministries to

consider whether one ICT investment can be reused by another. They also have to consider if

these proposed solutions comply with the abovementioned ICT-architecture principles. Since

two years ago, all large budgetary proposals covering ICT will have to go through my

department of ICT and Government Reform for assessment before our recommendation is

handed to the Ministry of Finance.

Future plans are centered on the principle of a digital first choice, or digital as default. The idea

of digital as default assumes that all written correspondence and messages between public

sector on the one side and businesses and citizens on the other should be handled

electronically.

We are now trying to establish further common ICT-solutions to support this idea. One such

solution is a common government message box. This is meant as a common channel for

government correspondence to citizens and businesses. We are now considering the ways to

implement such a solution.