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

and the generally high level of trust and confidence that Danes have in this aspect of government
operations – perhaps due in part to their long tradition of providing personal information to a range of
public registers. The OECD survey shows that only 21% of respondents consider privacy and security
concerns as being either a “very important” or “important” potential challenge to e-government
implementation.
Budgetary barriers to e-government
Budgetary environment
Like other Nordic countries, a defining characteristic of Denmark’s budget system is that central
budget definition and oversight rests with the Ministry of Finance, while individual ministries enjoy
decentralised authority for budget execution. The Ministry of Finance also has responsibility for
budget co-ordination, collecting budget proposals from ministries and combining them into the final
government budget proposal.
As a general rule, at the State government level ministers (and therefore ministries) are
responsible for all expenditure decisions taken within their area of responsibility, including ICT
spending. Every expenditure decision taken in State government is therefore a minister’s
responsibility. Each ministry is responsible for final allocation of funds within in its portfolio of
responsibilities, within the limits for expenditures for each “spending ministry” as determined by the
Ministry of Finance.
The Ministry of Finance exercises an important oversight function over ministries’ expenditure
programmes, and has the power to intervene if they do not respect the spending ceilings set for them.
Despite these oversight powers, neither the Ministry of Finance nor individual ministries appear to be
systematically monitoring ICT expenditures; as a result, there is no government-wide evaluation of
ICT spending available for purposes such as e-government policy or strategy development,
benchmarking or performance assessment.
Types of budgetary barriers
In regard to budgetary barriers to e-government, OECD survey respondents reported that the most
significant challenge they face is a lack of funding for e-government projects (considered to be
important by 71%), followed by a lack of shared/joint funding across levels of government, and the
difficulty of establishing and justifying the costs and benefits of e-government projects (both 65%). In
addition, a lack of long-term budgetary horizons for multi-year investments was also seen to be a
significant challenge by nearly half (48%) of respondents. Budgetary issues are slightly more
significant for organisations with “small” budgets (less than DKK 100 million) (see Figure 3.1). It
must be noted that, in all cases, there is a lack of hard data to either corroborate or refute these claims.
This is reflective of wider issues related to the capability Denmark has to evaluate its e-government
programme and initiatives (discussed above and in Chapter 8).
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