Theme Day with stakeholders provided important input to next-generation Digital Post

Participants at the theme day for the next-generation Digital Post contributed lots of exciting ideas on how Digital Post of the future can be made as user friendly as possible.

In December 2015, selected interest groups representing citizens and businesses as well as professional organisations and public authorities gathered at the Agency for Digitisation to present their wishes for next-generation Digital Post and to contribute input on how the solution can be made as user friendly as possible.

The next Digital Post solution must be able to accommodate many different user groups, making it very difficult to design the right solution which meets the many needs and match the rapid digital transformation. Following the themeday however, it is clear that a common wish from stakeholders is a single solution for all communication between government and, respectively, businesses and citizens.

The representatives of citizens and businesses also agreed that Digital Post must be made more accessible in the future. This could be done by enabling integration between the Digital Post solution and the companies' own systems, or through tagging of metadata to allow messages to be automatically sorted and forwarded to the right employee. It was also mentioned that in future citizens may need to be able to allow temporary read access to selected relatives. This allows a caregiver to get an overview of the digital post for example via applications for mobile platforms that can send reminders for messages which require some form of action.

A flexible solution can open up the market

Head of Division at the Agency for Digitisation, Stine Hegelund Bertelsen, is very happy to have received so much stakeholder input, and she emphasises the importance of an ongoing dialogue.

She points out that it is important to maintain the core of the existing solution which provides a safe and controlled environment for verifiable and irrefutable communication. That said, the task will be to develop a solution, which addresses among other things the challenges which users experience today and which ensures a solution that continues to be attractive.

"We are aware that the technological development is changing all the time and that this causes users' needs to keep changing too. We aim to provide a solution in which users experience a better digital flow and interaction, while ensuring that sending digital letters via Digital Post continues to be safe and secure. This points us towards a more flexible infrastructure. "Keep it simple", our stakeholders said several times" she says.

On-going stakeholder involvement

The next-generation Digital Post project is currently in the analysis phase, in which a series of analyses focusing on user needs, market trends, technical and legal conditions, etc. are being conducted.

The purpose of the theme day was to get some input from users, which together with the analyses can contribute to the framework of the project and play into the possible solution scenarios which will be presented in the first half of the 2016.

The Agency for Digitisation gives a high priority to continuous involvement of users and will engage stakeholders in dialogue regarding the solution scenarios once they have been prepared. Aside from such planned conversations, the project group welcomes comments and suggestions at any time.