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

Figure 5.2 Share of documents received electronically by the public sector
E-Documents
from citizens
E-Documents
from enterprises
E-Documents
from public
authorities
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
at least 25% less than 25% unknown
Source: Statistics Denmark, Information Society Denmark 2005.
This resistance to change extends beyond users of government services. Interviews with officials
indicated that the biggest challenge related to introducing e-government may be a cultural one of
changing people’s mindsets and work behaviours. Despite organisations’ investments in providing
frameworks that allow staff to better use ICT infrastructures, resistance to change is still persistent –
especially among top-level managers who are more reluctant to adapt to new ways of working than
others. While systems of recognition and reward for best practices and solutions in using ICT in
government (e.g. Top of the Web) have provided some incentives for a change of mentality, it is not
clear to what extent reward systems have had an impact on general staff behaviour.
Impact on skills
Changing skill requirements can be one of the most significant organisational changes
necessitated by e-government. A European Union (EU) survey undertaken in 2005 showed that
Denmark leads other EU countries in terms of incorporating measures of skills and organisational
change into e-government action plans, and in developing specific instruments to identify
e-government skill gaps.
Although the OECD survey showed that the majority of respondents experienced positive
impacts from e-government, some also reported challenges. A significant percentage of respondents
(87%) reported that adapting staff to change was an “important” or “somewhat important” challenge.
The challenge of updating management skills to account for e-government (important for 72%), and
lack of information management, information society and information technology skills (important
for, respectively, 72%, 71% and 71% of respondents) also ranked highly.
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