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

Figure 3.5 Use of public digital services by the population and enterprises
Source: Statistics Denmark, Key Figures on Information Society Denmark 2004.
Additionally, 55% of individuals used the Internet for some form of e-commerce activity, and
84% of businesses used it for Internet banking or to conduct other financial transactions. These
e-commerce figures have positive implications for Danes’ future willingness to adopt advanced
e-government applications requiring high levels of trust based on strong protections for privacy and
security.
Technological challenges
Despite the favourable technological environment for e-government, government organisations
face a wide variety of technological challenges, some quite significant. The OECD survey indicates
that the two greatest technological challenges are implementation of authentication and public key
infrastructure (important for 78% of respondents) and adjustment to rapid technological change (79%).
The high rating for authentication and PKI perhaps reflects the youth and complexity of these
technologies, coupled with the fact that the survey was conducted at the same time organisations were
readying themselves for eDay2, which involved implementation of PKI across government.
Of all the technological challenges examined in the OECD survey, sharing standards and
infrastructure among agencies (a key element of successful e-government) was the single most
important issue identified. This challenge was regarded as important by 76% of respondents, with 23%
rating it as very important. This result emphasises the importance of the work Denmark is doing in
developing an enterprise architecture and other arrangements for achieving interoperability of
information systems and data (see Chapter 6). It may also reflect the significant managerial and
cultural challenges that accompany technological issues in this area of e-government.
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