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

The strategy notes that Denmark is in a good position to develop e-government, having a
well-developed “network society”, high levels of Internet usage and a well-developed ICT
infrastructure in place in the public sector. It warns, however, that the Danish public sector does not
yet adequately meet the needs of citizens, and that more focused effort is required to make sure that
the benefits of e-government are fully realised.
The current version of the strategy is widely seen as an improvement on its predecessor,
providing clearer goals for organisations to pursue. The strategy does include measures for all of its
goals that are used not only to evaluate progress against the strategy, but also to inform its ongoing
development. Progress is reported to the Joint Board each time it meets, and annually to the
Parliament.
In interviews organisations reported that they can find it difficult to evaluate whether their
achievements are satisfactory. The majority of the measures set out in the strategy rely upon survey
data collected by Statistics Denmark. This reliance upon organisations’ self-reported progress against
the goals of the e-government strategy does not appear adequate for forming a robust and
independently validated view of whether these goals are, in fact, being adequately achieved.
Alongside the problem of the reliability of these measurements is a second problem relating to
specification of the measures themselves. For example, the Danish e-government strategy is notable
for establishing an economic goal of e-government releasing resources for use elsewhere in
government. It states that at least 75% of digitalisation projects must release resources, and at least
25% should do so to a great extent. However, there is no clarity over what is meant by “release
resources”, and even less about what is meant by “a great extent”. Coupled with the fact that
organisations are left to report their own achievements against this goal, the lack of specificity of the
measures creates the potential for lower performance than is expected by the Government, and/or
disputes over the level of actual achievements. Despite these problems, Denmark’s emphasis on
measurement of e-government goals is an important element of its e-government successes that could
benefit from further efforts in both specification and collection of measurement data.
Box 4.1 Denmark’s e-government vision and strategic goals
Denmark has a well-defined, clear and comprehensive e-government vision and strategy, which is well known
across government and acts as a driver for e-government implementation at the organisational level.
The vision of the current e-government strategy is that “Digitalisation must contribute to the creation of an efficient
and coherent public sector with a high quality of service, with citizens and businesses at the centre”. To do this,
the strategy defines five e-government goals (“signposts”), to be achieved by the end of 2006:
• The public sector must provide coherent services with citizens and businesses at the centre.
• E-Government must result in improved service quality and the release of resources.
• The public sector must work and communicate digitally.
• E-Government must be based on a coherent and flexible infrastructure.
• Public sector managers must lead the way and ensure that their own organisations are capable of realising
the vision.
Implementation of the strategy
The goals of Denmark’s e-government strategy are essentially to be achieved through two
channels – a set of high-visibility initiatives designed to achieve the goals that have been set for 2006,
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