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

such a framework be designed; and 3) how its use could be ensured These questions were answered
in mid-2003 with the MVTU’s publication of the White Paper on Enterprise Architecture.
The white paper, developed by the Working Group on IT Architecture established to report to the
MVTU’s Co-ordinating Information Committee, noted the need to remove technological barriers to
e-government across the public sector. It confirmed that a significant challenge in this area was the
lack of an enterprise architecture (including common standards for data exchange) to serve as the basis
for the development of common ICT solutions and infrastructure.
The white paper contained three main recommendations:
• Government organisations should take more active responsibility for enterprise architecture.
• A common enterprise architecture framework should be established for planning public
sector IT systems, especially to ensure system interoperability.
• There should be a major effort to spread knowledge and develop competencies in enterprise
architecture, especially in relation to cross-organisation initiatives.
It went on to recommend that a common enterprise architecture framework should include:
• Co-ordination mechanisms, including the appointment of an enterprise architecture
committee reporting to the Co-ordinating Information Committee.
• A common methodology (covering processes, concepts and specification of standards) for
development of enterprise architecture.
• Common choices and principles with regard to technical standards, ICT infrastructure etc.
(to be codified as the “Reference Profile”).
• Common tools to facilitate use of the architecture, such as databases and libraries of contract
models, process specifications, data definitions, software “components”, and specifications
for infrastructure solutions.
As a result of these recommendations, the goal of basing public sector use of ICT on a common
design framework was incorporated into both government ICT policy and Project e-Government, with
significant resources being put into achieving this goal by the National IT and Telecom Agency
(ITST). As well as leading processes to develop the wide range of standards required to implement the
enterprise architecture, the ITST has worked with the Digital Task Force to communicate its growing
knowledge and expertise in enterprise architecture to participants in a number of e-government
projects. Experience gained from these projects has then been fed back into the ITST’s ongoing
development of the enterprise architecture (especially the Reference Profile or “e-government
interoperability framework” – see below), and into handbooks and guidelines being produced to assist
organisations in implementing it in their own applications and systems.
The fundamental purpose of the enterprise architecture is to harmonise individual organisations’
decisions about ICT in order to achieve interoperability of government information and systems – a
precondition to creating the more efficient, coherent and user-centric public sector targeted by the
Danish e-government vision. In addition to supporting delivery of better services, the Danish
enterprise architecture is expected to enable optimization of the value of government ICT investments,
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