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

e-Income
Another good example of Danish efforts to develop common infrastructure and applications is
provided by the e-Income system. It has been developed to address a number of problems experienced
by government, employers and citizens in relation to provision and use of information about incomes
by government. For government, payment of income-related welfare benefits has often been based on
inadequate information about people’s income. This can result in payment errors, and create
opportunities for benefit fraud. For employers, the fact that they have to report income information to
a range of government organisations creates a large administrative burden. For citizens, information
deficiencies in this area can lead to inaccurate benefit payments, sometimes creating a risk of citizens
becoming unwittingly indebted to the State.
The solution to this problem has been to establish what is called the e-Income Register, a
common database into which employers provide information about employee income and working
hours. This information is used across the public sector in support of those functions to which the
information relates. This new arrangement delivers benefits by: 1) reducing employers’ reporting
burden; 2) increasing the accuracy of citizens’ benefit entitlements and payments; 3) reducing
government’s information collection costs; and 4) increasing the overall accuracy of operations.
e-Procurement
Like many OECD countries, Denmark has made efforts to apply e-government to the business of
public procurement. The Danish Public Procurement Portal (DOIP) is an electronic marketplace to
which both private and public purchasers and their suppliers have access. Launched in early 2002
under the initiative of the MVTU, the DOIP is an example of the typical Danish approach to
partnering with the private sector to develop e-government. The public sector has not directly invested
in establishment of the DOIP, which has instead been developed and is owned by a consortium of
Maersk Data, Danske Bank, Post Denmark and the telecom company TDC. The DOIP is operated by
an entity they have created called “gatetrade.net”, and the public sector simply pays fees for using the
system.
The Agency for Governmental Management acts as co-ordinator of government interests in the
DOIP, focusing on issues related to functionality, interfaces, security and transaction costs. Use of the
DOIP portal is not mandatory, but is recommended for all government agencies. Some regional and
local authorities make use of private marketplaces, and the State-owned company National
Procurement Ltd. (SKI) has also set up a simple e-tendering system (ETHICS, Netindkøb and
Netkatalog).
Common frameworks
In addition to having some common ICT infrastructures in place, Denmark has also been at the
forefront of government efforts to develop common frameworks to support e-government
collaboration, as outlined below.
Enterprise architecture
Currently, the most prominent of these common frameworks is the Danish enterprise architecture.
This architecture is intended to provide the common conceptual framework for design of ICT solutions
in the public sector. Work on its development began in late 2002, when the MVTU circulated the
Green Paper on Enterprise Architecture for public consultation. The green paper asked three key
questions: 1) did government need a common framework for enterprise architecture; 2) how could
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