A pioneering public sector

Even before COVID-19, Norway’s public sector was one of the most extensively digitalised in the world. When the crisis hit, a number of initiatives were launched in order to digitalise areas that had yet to go fully digital. In this way, Norway was able to maintain a good service level, despite the coronavirus restrictions.

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Photo: The Norwegian Digitalisation Agency on Flickr. CC BY 2.0

The public sector as an engine for digital transformation

The public sector is an important driver of digitalisation in Norway – both in its role as a supplier of digital services to residents and businesses, and as an important client for industries such as the ICT-industry.

Public-Private Digital Cooperation (DSOP)

This is a collaborative project involving the Norwegian Tax Administration, the Brønnøysund Register Centre, the Norwegian Digitalisation Agency, the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration, the Police, the Norwegian Mapping Authority and the financial services industry. Together they are working to digitalise important societal processes through the DSOP programme. An example is the consent-based loan applications. Bank customers no longer need to submit tax returns and pay slips to the bank when they apply for a loan, but can instead give digital consent through Altinn to allow the Tax Administration to share information on income, debts and net assets with the bank. This saves time and effort for both bank and customer.

The National Program for Supplier Development

Every year, the Norwegian public sector buys goods and services to an amount in excess of NOK 500 billion. These procurements can be used to promote innovation and use of new technologies. The National Program for Supplier Development has been put in place in order to increase the innovation effect of public procurements. Innovative procurement is all about buying better products and services by utilising the opportunities provided by regulations and policy instruments.

Since its launch in 2010, the programme has assisted public sector enterprises with more than 150 procurements and developed innovative public procurement methods. The Program for Supplier Development is a partnership project involving the Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise (NHO), the Association of Local and Regional Authorities (KS), the Norwegian Agency for Public and Financial Management (DFØ), Innovation Norway and the Research Council of Norway.

Data and data-driven innovation

The data-driven economy is the fastest-growing part of the world’s GDP, and the Government would like to see more of this growth in Norway. Our country has good public data, and many of these datasets are already publicly available. But there is room for improvement. The public sector can get better at sharing data, and at making datasets available to the corporate sector. The corporate sector can get better at making use of their own data and publicly available data, and at sharing data across businesses, for example within a specific trade or industry. Industry initiatives in aquaculture, where fish farming businesses and seafood suppliers to work together on introducing joint standards for collecting and sharing data, are good examples of this.

In order to assist businesses with sharing and utilising data, the Norwegian Digitalisation Agency has established a resource centre for data sharing. This centre will work as a driver for data-sharing initiatives, but will also provide guidance.

Regulatory sandboxes

Regulatory sandboxes are primarily tools for promoting responsible innovation. The idea is to give businesses an opportunity to trial new technologies and/or commercial models. The Government has already established regulatory sandboxes in the transport sector, in the form of legislation that facilitate the trial projects with driverless autonomous vehicles. Driverless buses are currently in operation in several Norwegian towns. Since 2016, a number of test areas for autonomous ships have been established in Norway.

As a part of a follow-up to the National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence, the Government has supported the establishment of a regulatory sandbox for artificial intelligence at the Norwegian Data Protection Authority (DPA). This sandbox will allow businesses to develop innovative services based on artificial intelligence, under the guidance of the DPA. The sandbox will not facilitate dispensations from GDPR, but the Authority will be able to grant exemption from enforcement measures during the project’s development stage. This is to enable experimentation in the search for good solutions that will also serve to enhance the level of personal data protection. The sandbox will be open to businesses and public sector agencies that utilise personal data in their work to develop innovative products and services that can demonstrate a public benefit.

Quick establishment of new schemes after COVID-19

Among all public sectors, the health sector was probably the one to be hardest hit when the coronavirus caused the country to go into more or less complete lockdown on 12 March. However, other sectors were also facing major challenges. After 12 March, many employees were laid off. This necessitated a number of new schemes to compensate both employees and enterprises for their income shortfall.

The Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration (NAV)

The Storting’s decisions to strengthen the economic safety net during the coronavirus pandemic were rapidly formulated into statutes and regulations. It was essential to make the regulations easily applicable, thus to ensure that appropriate schemes and data systems could be rapidly put in place.

A solution for handling applications for advance payment of unemployment benefit was in place already on 30 March. In addition, a number of schemes – with associated ICT systems – have been developed to protect the incomes of employers, employees and the self-employed.

For NAV to be able to cope with the increased caseload in all these areas, the processing of cases had to be automated wherever possible. In April 2020, a temporary regulation that authorised fully automatic processing was therefore added to the National Insurance Act. Many of the new solutions that were established in NAV to tackle the challenges associated with COVID-19 are fully automatic. In the autumn of 2020, the Storting adopted a government proposal to permit fully automatic case processing in NAV on a permanent basis. The statute was added to the NAV Act and entered into force on 4 December 2020.

The Norwegian Tax Administration

One of the largest programmes for tackling the economic consequences of the coronavirus outbreak is the compensation scheme for businesses. The scheme awards financial support to enterprises that have suffered a major loss of income as a result of the coronavirus situation, so they can cover fixed costs. Owing to cutting-edge digital infrastructure, advanced digital skills and joint effort, the Norwegian Tax Administration together with the Norwegian Digitalisation Agency, the financial infrastructure company Bits and the financial services group DNB was able to develop the complicated support scheme in only three weeks. During the coronavirus crisis, the shared solutions ‘ID-porten’ and ‘Altinn’ have proven crucial for establishing further new digital systems for employees who have been laid off, for the health services and for industry.

The courts of law

The measures taken to halt the spread of COVID-19 had major consequences for the Norwegian judicial system. Between 80 and 90 per cent of all court proceedings were either postponed or cancelled in March 2020. To prevent accumulation of a large backlog, the Government temporarily changed the procedural regulations for the courts. These changes include extended opportunities to hold video meetings and undertake questioning by telephone or video conferencing, and to sign judgments digitally.

A project to fully digitalise court proceedings was underway already before the COVID-19 outbreak.

Strong rise in the use of gateway websites

The government portal ‘ID-porten’ and the Common Contact Register (KRR) have served as crucial digital building blocks in the acute situation that arose during the coronavirus pandemic. A large demand for stable common solutions emerged, and new services had to be quickly developed.

The number of searches in the Common Contact Register doubled in March 2020. The register enabled the health services, local councils and other public agencies to distribute important information to the population. The ‘ID-porten’ website was crucial for establishing new digital solutions such as the compensation scheme for the self-employed. Despite the strong increase in traffic from March 2020 onwards, the gateway websites have remained stable with high uptime.

Digitalisation in local government

In recent years, local councils have been given more say in national digitalisation initiatives. In the autumn of 2020, the Ministry of Local Government and Modernisation and the Norwegian Association of Local and Regional Authorities (KS) signed an agreement that grants even more influence to the local councils, including through an annual consultation meeting between KS and six ministries.

Local authorities value their autonomy highly, but when it comes to matters related to digitalisation, they see a need for more coordination with central government. The goal is to produce digital solutions that are well adapted to local needs. This calls for collaboration. Key candidates for partnership include electronic patient records and digital programmes for schools and child welfare services.

When the coronavirus pandemic hit Norway, it also posed challenges to the local authorities’ preparedness and adaptability. Many local councils were quick to restructure and find good solutions for dealing with the new challenges, and many were good at sharing both their experiences and practical solutions with other municipalities.