Denmark Action Plan Review 2023-2025

This product consists of an IRM review of the Danish 2023-2025 action planAction plans are at the core of a government’s participation in OGP. They are the product of a co-creation process in which government and civil society jointly develop commitments to open governmen.... The action plan comprises five commitments. This review emphasizes its analysis on the strength of the action plan to contribute to implementation and results. For the commitment-by-commitment data, see Annex 1. For details regarding the methodology and indicators used by the IRM for this Action Plan Review, see Section III.

Overview of the 2023-2025 Action Plan

Denmark’s fifth action plan focuses on civic participation, digital innovation, and open dataBy opening up data and making it sharable and reusable, governments can enable informed debate, better decision making, and the development of innovative new services. Technical specifications: Polici.... Most of the commitments started before the action plan with modest potential to stretch existing practices. The Agency for Digital Government should ensure that Denmark meets OGP’s Participation and Co-Creation StandardsCollaboration between government, civil society and other stakeholders is at the heart of the OGP process. The Participation and Co-Creation Standards are intended to support this collaboration throug... during implementation through regular dialogue with civil society and reporting on the progress of the action plan.

Denmark’s fifth action plan includes commitments from a range of government agencies and levels of government. Compared to the previous action plan, the fifth plan places more focus on civic participation. The action plan continues Denmark’s focus on open data and digitalization, with commitments to strengthen the health sector using voluntarily-generated behavioral data (DataDonor) and to provide easier access to public data for researchers, businesses, and civil society (National Data Portal).

The co-creation process began with an open call for proposals in September 2022. After the announcement of parliamentary elections in autumn 2022, the Agency for Digital Government (AfDG) postponed the multi-stakeholder forum (MSF) meeting from October 2022 to January 2023, until after a new government was formed and parliamentary work resumed.[1] During the meeting in January 2023, the MSF members (civil society and government agencies) discussed the proposals and agreed on the initiatives for the action plan.[2] After the meeting, the AfDG drafted the initiatives into the commitments with the lead agencies and shared them with civil society for further comments. A participating stakeholder noted that one online hearing and one meeting were insufficient for in-depth involvement in the co-creation process or for stakeholders to understand the opportunities and limitations of the process.[3]

Many activities in the action plan were already in progress before the plan’s start (June 2023). The need to postpone the co-creation process until after the autumn 2022 elections made it difficult for the co-creation process to significantly affect the scope of the commitments. Moreover, Denmark’s OGP action plans are not supported by specific budgetary allocations, so only initiatives with established funding are included as commitments.[4] Interviewed civil society representatives expressed that there is limited interest in the OGP process because there is no possibility to include new initiatives and the lack of political involvement.[5] The latter could be addressed by developing a political strategy for civic participation and open government.[6] Furthermore, to increase interest in future action plans, the AfDG could organize more opportunities for participation in the co-creation processCollaboration between government, civil society and other stakeholders (e.g., citizens, academics, private sector) is at the heart of the OGP process. Participating governments must ensure that a dive... and keep the process open for longer. The AfDG could also increase its outreach by sharing information on the OGP process on social media and in newsletters, and through direct engagement with civil society networks.

The IRM has identified CommitmentOGP commitments are promises for reform co-created by governments and civil society and submitted as part of an action plan. Commitments typically include a description of the problem, concrete action... 5 on the National Data Portal as the most promising. This commitment will provide users with a single access point for data from the public sector. During implementation, the AfDG could develop a strategy to engage civil society in improving the user experience of the Data Portal.

The AfDG should ensure Denmark’s compliance with OGP’s Participation and Co-Creation Standards during implementation. This will entail organizing at least two meetings with civil society every year to present the status of the commitments and collect comments. The AfDG should also update Denmark’s OGP repositoryAccess to relevant information is essential for enabling participation and ensuring accountability throughout the OGP process. An OGP repository is an online centralized website, webpage, platform or ... with evidence of implementation, as there was no systematic reporting on the previous action plan (2019-2022).

Promising Commitments in Denmark 2023-2025 Action Plan

The following review looks at the one commitment that the IRM identified as having the potential to realize the most promising results. Promising commitments address a policy area that is important to stakeholders or the national context. They must be verifiable, have a relevant open government lens, and have modest or substantial potential for results. This review also provides an analysis of challenges, opportunities, and recommendations to contribute to the learning and implementation process of this action plan.

Table 1. Promising commitments

[1] The announcement came earlier than the normal four-year cycle of national elections in Denmark, so the AfDG had to adjust the co-creation timeline to take the elections into account. See Folketinget, “Hvad sker der med Folketingets arbejde, når der er udskrevet valg?”, accessed 23 November 2023, https://www.ft.dk/da/ofte-stillede-spoergsmaal/valg_ftarb_hvad-sker-der-med-folketingets-arbejde-naar-der-er-udskrevet-valg

[2] Danish Agency for Digitisation, OGP network meetings, https://digst.dk/strategier/internationalt-samarbejde/open-government/ogp-netvaerksmoeder/

[3] Bjørn Bedsted (Danish Board of Technology), interview by the IRM, 20 October 2023.

[4] Leander Wiesheu (PoC, Agency for Digital Government), interview by the IRM, 30 October 2023.

[5] Bjørn Bedsted (Danish Board of Technology), interview by the IRM, 20 October 2023, and with Søren Kirk Jensen (Independent Policy Analysis), 30 October 2023.

[6] Søren Kirk Jensen (Independent Policy Analysis), interview by the IRM, 25 October 2023, and interview with Transparency International Denmark during the Results Report for the action plan 2019-2022 (Results Report: Denmark 2019-2022, https://www.opengovpartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Denmark_Results-Report_2019-2022_EN.pdf)