Digital-ready legislation

What is the aim of digital-ready legislation?

The goal of digital-ready legislation is to cut red tape by simplifying legislation and integrating public case processing and technology. Unnecessary and complex legislation should be simplified, and new legislation should be easily understandable and digitally compatible. Future legislation must be drafted in a way that is both easily manageable and enables digital administration.

Digital-ready legislation aims to enable an easier everyday life for citizens, businesses and public employees while improving the effectiveness of the Danish public sector and ensuring that personal data is handled securely and responsibly. New legislation must support and benefit the citizens of the digital society that is the Denmark of today.

When is legislation considered digital-ready?

The legislation is digital-ready when it can be administered in whole or in part digitally and supports the use of new technologies. Assessing the availability of legislation is an integral part of the pre-legislative work. This is done in two steps in the legislative process to ensure that legislators and civil servants think through what digital implications the legislative proposal will have.

Digital-ready legislation provides an increased focus on implementation impacts for public authorities. This is the case as it with the agreement on digital-ready legislation has become compulsory to assess the implementation impacts of new legislative initiatives at an early stage in the policy-making process.

This applies to:

• Cases submitted to the central government committees
• Greater political negotiations and reforms
• Legislative proposals (in the explanatory notes)

In this way, issues regarding implementation will be well illustrated throughout the chain of legislative decision making — from the first political proposal to the final bill adopted in the Danish Parliament.

It is mandatory to assess whether the legislation is digital-ready. The assessment is based on seven principles for digital-ready legislation. It is only when specific considerations arise, such as the best interests of the child, that the principles should be derogated from.

The Secretariat for digital-ready legislation

The Secretariat for digital-ready legislation was established in early 2018. The Secretariat for digital-ready legislation's main purpose is to ensure that the public implementation impacts are properly described in new legislation and whether the legislation is digital-ready.

The Secretariat for digital-ready legislation must follow up on whether public implementation impacts are properly described in new legislation as well as evaluate whether digitisation has been fully considered in the creation of a new bill.

The Secretariat handles the following tasks:

• Screening of legislative drafts, assessment of public implementation impacts and follow-up on issues in regard to this topic.
• The Secretariat submits consultation responses for legislation, which contains public implementation impacts.
• Development and continuous updating of guidance and tools for assessing public implementation impacts.
• Counselling for ministries regarding digital-ready legislation.

The Secretariat’s staff are always willing to inform and advise those who are interested in digital-ready legislation. Additionally, presentations and advisory meetings can be booked by contacting the Secretariat.