New direction for reform to create world-class digital services

As part of the Coherency Reform of the Public Sector, the government is launching a new initiative: World-class digital services. Through digital solutions and emerging technologies, the new direction for the reform will develop the public sector to deliver more coherent and up-to-date digital services for citizens and businesses.

Denmark to keep its leading position

Citizens have surely taken NemID (national eID/digital signature solution), Digital Post (mandatory digital letter box solution) and digital self-service solutions to heart. Whether it be reading official letters from the municipality or applying for a government education grant or housing benefits, everything can be done digitally. This means that much of the contact between citizens and businesses, and the public sector takes place at home and whenever it suits the citizen.

For this reason, Denmark is a frontrunner in digital public services according to the United Nation’s e-Government Survey. The Danish government wants to maintain this leading position and also raise its political ambitions. This is necessary in order for the public sector to keep up with the rapid digital and technological developments and citizens' high expectations of digital solutions.

Three focus areas for the development of digital services

World-class digital service identifies three focus areas which will forge more coherent and flexible services centred on the interests of citizens:

• Knowledge, overview, and transparency.
• Digital services on the terms of citizens and businesses.
• Quick dissemination of emerging technologies.

An important point is to ensure that citizens continue to have confidence in public sector data processing by improving transparency and providing citizens with a better overview. It can be difficult for the individual citizen to get an overview of exactly what data public authorities collect and use on a regular basis. Therefore,  more transparency is needed in regard to public sector use of data, so that citizens easily can keep up with what information and data the authorities have on them.

Read the World-class Digital Service initiative here