Strategy for Digital Welfare (DK0043)

The Government, Local Government Denmark and Danish Regions have jointly drawn up a strategy for digital welfare. The strategy sets the course for the public sector’s work on digitisation and welfare technology in the social, health and educational areas.
The goal is that digital welfare services can be supplied more efficiently to make everyday life less cumbersome and improve the quality of life for citizens. The strategy includes 24 initiatives and runs until 2020. Up to the year 2020, new targets will be set and new initiatives launched on an ongoing basis.

Commitment 10. Strategy for Digital Welfare

Commitment Text:

The Government, Local Government Denmark and Danish Regions have jointly drawn up a strategy for digital welfare. The strategy sets the course for the public sector’s work on digitisation and welfare technology in the social, health and educational areas.

The goal is that digital welfare services can be supplied more efficiently to make everyday life less cumbersome and improve the quality of life for citizens. The strategy includes 24 initiatives and runs until 2020. Up to the year 2020, new targets will be set and new initiatives launched on an ongoing basis.

Responsible institution: None specified

Supporting institution(s): Local Government Denmark and Danish Regions

Start date:  September 2013             End date: Year 2020

Commitment Aim:

Denmark’s Strategy for Digital Welfare was released in September 2013.  It consists of 24 initiatives to be pursued through 2020, that each pertain to seven main topics: the spread of tele-medicine, effective collaboration among medical professionals, welfare technology for medical care, new digital possibilities for casework, digital learning and teaching, digital collaboration in teaching, and prerequisites for digital welfare. The strategy is to be augmented with new initiatives during the course of implementation.

Status

Mid-term: Unclear

The time span of the commitment is much longer than that of the action plan, so its status was labeled “unclear.” The public can view the implementation status of each of the 24 initiatives on the government website for the strategy,^{[Note 38: Status on initiatives in the strategy for Digital Welfare, AFD (updated 23 August 2016), http://www.digst.dk/Digital-velfaerd/Strategi-for-digital-velfaerd/Status-for-strategiens-initiativer.aspx]} but it remains uncertain what actions are still required for this commitment to be coded as complete. For further information, please see the IRM mid-term progress report.^{[Note 39: Denmark IRM mid-term report 2014-15, http://www.opengovpartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2001/01/Denmark_IRM%20Progress%20Report%202014-15_Final_eng.pdf]}

End of term: Limited

Based on the same interpretation of the commitment as midterm, the IRM-researcher has re-evaluated the completion status as limited. According to the government, the strategy for digital welfare was discontinued, and the remaining commitments absorbed in the Digital Strategy 2016-2020^{[Note 40: http://www.digst.dk/Digital-velfaerd/Strategi-for-digital-velfaerd]}.  The government website on the strategy for digital welfare at the time of writing had not been updated since April 2016. Nevertheless, in the months after the period of evaluation of this report, the government updated the content of the website, including the reports, and the analysis and initiative page.

The IRM researcher tried to contact the AFD^{[Note 41: The IRM researcher sent an e-mail to digitalvelfaerd@digst.dk on 3 October 2016.]} for an update on the digital welfare strategy and its’ pertinence to open government, but the responsible official no longer works there. The team responsible for the digital welfare strategy also had not responded to the IRM researcher’s request for information at the time of writing.

A follow-up interview with the lead official responsible for OGP (Cathrine Lippert) conducted in August 5^th 2016, did not reveal any OGP relevant information on the digital welfare strategy.

Did it open government?

Access to information: Did not change

Civic Participation: Did not change

Public Accountability: Did not change

Due to the lack of specificity in the commitment’s language, the IRM researcher is unable to assess its relevance to OGP values - the commitment was thus not evaluated for the question “did it open government?” However, 75% of stakeholders interviewed by the IRM researcher report this commitment as being “important” or “very important” to welfare in Denmark.

The development of a digital welfare strategy has a moderate potential impact. The scope of the strategy is limited by its focus on digital improvements - had its implementation involved release of government-held information or involved citizens in the creation of a new policy structure, the commitment would have become relevant to OGP values and perhaps contributed to changes in government practice in areas of access to information or civic participation.

Carried forward?

As Denmark has not yet developed its third action plan, it is unknown whether this commitment will be carried over. Given the topical differences of initiatives in the digital welfare strategy, as well as the commitment’s promise to add initiatives during implementation, there is ample room for connecting the strategy with OGP values.