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

Social environment
Danish society uses a consensus-based approach to find answers to the questions that confront it
– a situation that mirrors the political environment.
Danes express the highest levels of satisfaction with “the way democracy works” of any EU
citizens. In a survey conducted in 2001, 93% responded that they were either very or fairly satisfied
with the way democracy worked. In 2003, trust in Danish politicians was at its highest level since first
measured in 1971.
The public sector appears to benefit from these public attitudes. Danes exhibit high levels of trust
in government, which is notably transparent and free of corruption. Danes have an overall willingness
to interact with the State, and there is a general satisfaction with public services, creating a positive
environment for e-government implementation.
Economic environment
Denmark has been near the top of the OECD’s income rankings for many years – its 2003 per
capita GDP of USD 29 800 was 15% above the OECD average. In the period 1993-2003, the average
annual growth in GDP was a little below total OECD (2.25% compared with 2.6%) and considerably
above that of the Euro area (1.8%). However, in both 2002 and 2003 the annual growth in GDP was
well below the OECD average, with growth in 2003 being 0.4%, although growth was very close to
the Euro area.
Over the last few decades, Denmark has changed from being an agricultural/industrial society to
becoming a service society, with almost 75% of all employed persons working in the service sector. In
2002, there were about 280,000 enterprises in Denmark, the majority being small and medium-sized
enterprises: 55% had no employees, 36% had one to nine employees, almost 8% had between 10 and
99 employees and only 2,200 (0.8%) had 100 employees or more. However, the latter category
represents 62% of total employment.
Denmark has the most equal income distribution among OECD member countries, partly because
of its comprehensive welfare state. Given an ageing population, a key economic challenge is to
maintain growth in living standards while preserving the social welfare system. According to
population projections, the working part of the population (individuals aged 25-64 years) will decline
by 13% over the next four decades, while the population aged 65+ will increase rapidly from 15% of
the total population in 2004 to 23% in 2050.
The Government’s approach to addressing this challenge, laid out in the year 2000 in its 10-year
economic framework called A Sustainable Future - Denmark 2010 (“the 2010 plan”) is to boost
employment, restrain public spending growth and pay down debt. The Danish public sector is large,
providing over one-third of jobs. Achieving efficiency improvements in the public sector will have an
important impact on the fiscal sustainability of the welfare state. Denmark has recognised that
achieving these improvements requires, among other things, public investment. In Investing in
Denmark’s Future, 2001 (the public investment strategy that is one of the responses to the 2010 plan)
there are two particular measures that have a direct bearing on e-government – investing in Denmark’s
transition to being a knowledge-based society with increasing use of ICT, and developing more
efficient public administrative procedures to free resources for care and nursing.
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