OECD Peer Review of E-Government in Denmark - ePractice.eu

FESD – Joint electronic document management
The FESD or “joint electronic document initiative” has been a key part of Project e-Government
for two main reasons. First, it has provided an important early example of the benefits that can be
achieved by adopting applications that conform to the interoperability standards developed as part of
work on the Danish enterprise architecture (see below). Second, it has been used to showcase the
benefits of increased inter-organisational collaboration in managing government information.
The initiative was launched by the Joint Board of e-Government in 2002 in response to a number
of problems foreseen in the increasing adoption of electronic document management (EDM) in the
Danish public sector. Significant issues were:
• Observation of a number of relatively poor, stand-alone (and thus divergent)
implementations of EDM. Failures were often evident when there was too much attention
paid to implementing the EDM solution, and too little to business process redesign and
organisational change.
• A concern that unco-ordinated development of EDM systems would lead to long-run
problems related to the archiving of government information.
• Failure of the ICT market to provide EDM solutions that were fully aligned with the
operational and business process requirements of government organisations, or with
emerging Danish government interoperability standards.
The Board determined that the best response to these problems was an initiative designed to bring
government organisations together to identify what their real ongoing EDM requirements (covering
both document and case management) would be, and then to ensure that the ICT market could supply
products that would meet them. The resulting FESD project is based on a clear vision for how this
aspect of e-government should best be handled in the future.
Box 6.2 Vision and aims of the FESD project
The FESD electronic document and case management solution has been developed on the following vision and
aims for a common EDM solution:
• Government organisations should need only one EDM solution for registration, management, control and
archiving of all cases and documents.
• The solution should deliver efficiency gains in excess of the cost of the solution.
• The solution should be based on approved interoperability standards (defined by the Ministry of Science,
Technology and Innovation and regarding, for example, handling of XML and digital signatures), and also be
able to be integrated with the specialised in-house ICT systems and applications used by government
organisations.
• The solution should be able to be implemented quickly and effectively, without extensive use of external
consultants.
The overall aim of the project has been to facilitate the efficient use of EDM in a way which maximizes the
benefits for both individual organisations and the public sector as a whole, while minimizing the collective costs of
EDM. The focus has been on facilitating, as part of the broader process of digitalisation of the public sector, the
adoption of standardised approaches to EDM that improve the efficiency and quality of both the internal
operations of government organisations and the inter-relationships that they have with citizens, businesses and
the rest of the public sector. The process also aims to reduce the overall technical, operational and financial risks
of implementing EDM.
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