Information Portal for Day-Care Facilities (DK0052)

What is the public problem that the commitment will address?: Today, parents only have access to small amounts and often non-comparable data about individual day-care facilities and childminders. This means that parents often have an insufficient basis for comparing day-care facilities when looking for the facility that best suits their child and family.; What is the commitment?: One unified platform will be developed in the form of an information portal that collects data from local governments and day-care facilities across the country and presents this data publicly and easily accessible, i.e. in so-called dashboards, so that parents can make an informed decision based on the factors that matter the most to their family. The development of the information portal will be done in several stages: A feasibility study will be carried out in autumn 2017 to identify the information about day-care facilities that are most in demand, and whether they can be integrated into the portal. The results of the pre-analysis will be available in October 2017. Once the results of the feasibility study are available and a decision has been made as to which types of information the portal is to show, the technical development of the portal will commence. This development is expected to run from the end of 2017 up to and including the first six months of 2018. The intent is to launch the information portal before the end of the 3rd quarter of 2018 with selected key figures for information broken down at municipal level. Continuous efforts will be undertaken to make the information available at institution level as well and, where possible, at unit level. However, in order to succeed, existing data from various registers will need to be compiled accurately. It is expected that an institutional register can be established during 2019.; How will the commitment contribute to solve the public problem?: The platform aims to increase transparency and openness by making available relevant key figures about individual day-care facilities. The objective of the information portal is to ensure that families get access to comparable information about individual day-care facilities. At the same time, the information portal will make prioritising easier and promote goal-oriented management of the day-care facility sector by local-government managers and decision-makers; Why is this commitment relevant to OGP values?: The information portal ensures that comparable data is available in one place and displayed in an easy and user-friendly manner. This will help promote transparency about day-care facilities. Accordingly, citizens will be able to make an informed decision on the basis of information about the public administration.; Additional information: Link to the comprehensive day-care facility agreement, which outlines all the initiatives: https://www.regeringen.dk/publikationer-og-aftaletekster/staerke-dagtilbud-alleboern-skal-med-i-faellesskabet/

Commitment 3: Information portals for day-care facilities

Language of the commitment as it appears in the action plan:

"One unified platform will be developed in the form of an information portal that collects data from local governments and day-care facilities across the country and presents this data publicly and easily accessible, i.e. in so-called dashboards, so that parents can make an informed decision based on the factors that matter the most to their family.

The development of the information portal will be done in several stages:

A feasibility study will be carried out in autumn 2017 to identify the information about day-care facilities that are most in demand, and whether they can be integrated into the portal. The results of the pre-analysis will be available in October 2017.

Once the results of the feasibility study are available and a decision has been made as to which types of information the portal is to show, the technical development of the portal will commence. This development is expected to run from the end of 2017 up to and including the first six months of 2018.

The intent is to launch the information portal before the end of the 3rd quarter of 2018 with selected key figures for information broken down at municipal level.

Continuous efforts will be undertaken to make the information available at institution level as well and, where possible, at unit level. However, in order to succeed, existing data from various registers will need to be compiled accurately. It is expected that an institutional register can be established during 2019."

Milestones:

3.1 Preliminary analysis

3.2 Technical development of the portal

3.3 Launch of the daytime childcare portal

3.4 Establishment of the new daytime childcare register

Start Date: July 2017

End Date: 2019

Editorial note: For the full text of this commitment, see "The Danish OGP National Action Plan 2017–2019," Danish Agency for Digitisation, https://en.digst.dk/policy-and-strategy/open-government/open-government-partnership-ogp-action-plan/, pp. 11–12.

Context and Objectives

On 9 June 2017, the Danish People's Party, the Social Democratic Party, and the Social Liberal Party joined in an agreement called "Stronger day care options—all children must be part of the collective." The agreement contains 24 initiatives (from three focus areas) intended to give families with children more flexibility and choice. The three areas of emphasis are (a) increased flexibility and choice, (b) the welfare and learning of children, and (c) professionalism and clear leadership.

Commitment 3 of Denmark's 2017–2019 action plan constitutes one element of the "Stronger day care options" agreement, emphasising that day-care facilities must "contribute to safe and good conditions for families, safe and stimulating teaching environments and coherent progress for the children."^{[Note : "Stærkere Dagtilbud—Alle Børn Skal Med i Fællesskabet," the Danish Government, 27 April 2017, https://www.regeringen.dk/publikationer-og-aftaletekster/staerke-dagtilbud-alle-boern-skal-med-i-faellesskabet/. ]} This agreement gives day-care facilities roles as active agents in making sure parents can access information on the institution that is best suited for their families.

The commitment aims to develop a common platform that will collect data from municipal and day-care institutions across the country. This data will be presented on publicly available and easily accessible portals, called dashboards. With this data, parents will be able to choose day care based on sufficient information. Through the platform, the government intends to provide transparency and give access to open data. It also hopes to provide a better communication method for relevant information on day-care institutions. The initiative is relevant to the current domestic political debate, as the quality of welfare institutions (including day care, elderly care, health care) and the corresponding level of taxation is a vigorously debated topic.^{[Note : Morten Nielsen, "Fire Tiltag og en Milliard Kroner Skal Gøre Børns Første 1000 Dage Bedre," Tv2, 24 August 2018,}

http://nyheder.tv2.dk/politik/2018-08-24-fire-tiltag-og-en-milliard-kroner-skal-goere-boerns-foerste-1000-dage-bedre. ]

In terms of OGP values, this commitment increases the public's access to information by providing further details on day-care choices. It also employs technology and innovation to increase transparency and accountability. The commitment is not coded as relevant to civic participation, as the data for the day-care portal does not appear to have been gathered through consultation with the public.

The commitment is verifiable, as the main milestone concerns the establishment of the day-care information portal. There could be more specificity in the milestones, however, regarding the technical development of the portal and the preliminary analysis. Further, it is not clear which stakeholders are responsible for developing and completing the different stages and milestones of the initiative.

The Ministry for Children and Social Affairs has been collaborating with Local Government Denmark and the Union of Pedagogues in the development and implementation of this initiative. (In the future, other OGP initiatives could follow this example of local-national collaboration.) The single-issue focus on day care may stimulate interest among the general population in this particular initiative. Thus, for future OGP commitments, this initiative could also be a model for engaging civil society in a more dynamic way than through general digitisation initiatives.

The IRM researcher considers the potential impact of the commitment to be moderate. The provision of data from local governments and day-care facilities may improve access to information and make it easier for parents across the country to make informed decisions about day-care facilities. Moreover, the commitment corresponds to a theme that is of high importance in Danish society. Thus, it is relevance to the Danish national action plan and to OGP's involvement overall.

Next steps

The IRM researcher recommends the following:

· Increase cooperation between the Ministry for Children and Social Affairs and the Agency for Digitisation, to unify various data-driven initiatives and develop a single platform that may provide comparable information across various welfare issues (e.g., day care, health care, elderly care).

· Invite Local Government Denmark representatives to the multi-stakeholder forum to ensure that the Danish OGP process has consistent input from the decentralised level.

· Since the commitment is virtually completed, the IRM researcher does not recommend that it be carried forward into the next action plan. The IRM researcher does recommend, however, that this commitment's model—with its focus on a single issue of political and social relevance to the wider population—be used as inspiration for future initiatives in Danish OGP action plans.

3. Information portals for day-care facilities

Language of the commitment as it appears in the action plan:

“One unified platform will be developed in the form of an information portal that collects data from local governments and day-care facilities across the country and presents this data publicly and easily accessible, i.e. in so-called dashboards, so that parents can make an informed decision based on the factors that matter the most to their family.

The development of the information portal will be done in several stages:

A feasibility study will be carried out in autumn 2017 to identify the information about day-care facilities that are most in demand, and whether they can be integrated into the portal. The results of the pre-analysis will be available in October 2017.

Once the results of the feasibility study are available and a decision has been made as to which types of information the portal is to show, the technical development of the portal will commence. This development is expected to run from the end of 2017 up to and including the first six months of 2018.

The intent is to launch the information portal before the end of the 3rd quarter of 2018 with selected key figures for information broken down at municipal level.

Continuous efforts will be undertaken to make the information available at institution level as well and, where possible, at unit level. However, in order to succeed, existing data from various registers will need to be compiled accurately. It is expected that an institutional register can be established during 2019.”

Milestones:

• Preliminary analysis
• Technical development of the portal
• Launch of the daytime childcare portal
• Establishment of the new daytime childcare register

Start Date: July 2017

End Date: 2019

Editorial note: For the full text of this commitment, see “The Danish OGP National Action Plan 2017–2019,” Danish Agency for Digitisation, pp. 11–12, https://en.digst.dk/policy-and-strategy/open-government/open-government-partnership-ogp-action-plan/.

This commitment aimed to develop a common platform to collect data from municipalities and day-care institutions across the country. This data would then be presented on publicly available and easily accessible portals (dashboards). This data would provide parents in Denmark with better information in order to help them to better choose daycares. [8]

The Ministry of Children and Education Education has developed the data portal for day-care facilities, and it is now online. [9] During the preparatory phase, stakeholders were able to provide inputs and comments with regards to the selection of data sets and information to be published on the dashboards. The data portal can be accessed under a subsite of the Ministry of Children and Education’s webpage, and is visualized as an interactive dashboard that provides basic information at the level of individual institutions. Finally, a daytime childcare register has been established to facilitate standardization of day-care data from municipalities (Milestone 3.4).

Individual day-care facilities can now publish basic information via the portal which is limited to basic information such as lunch schemes, age groups, and pedagogical profile. [10] Data on numbers of educated pedagogues and average norms are also available but only at the municipal level. Additional information will be added once the new daytime childcare registry has been implemented in municipalities, which is scheduled for 2022. [11] However, it is unclear what type of data will be included.

The data portal approach to day-care facilities does not have universal support from all stakeholders within the educational sector. For example, an interviewed representative of the Danish Union of Early Childhood and Youth Educators (BUPL) stated that the newly established portal may be in conflict with the values of the recently adopted Danish Child Care Act. A further argument is that the data itself is unlikely to promote quality in the sector, as it cannot effectively capture the complexities within pedagogical environments. Hence, the data portal may not be the most effective approach to empower parents’ choices. [12]

The commitment constituted an innovative approach to improving parents’ overview of childcare options through an easily accessible information portal. As it stands, the portal provides a single overview of local data that was limited and difficult to retrieve prior to the action plan. While the portal now provides parents with a user-friendly tool to obtain an overview of day-care facilities and compare them, the data currently available is limited, and there is no consensus among stakeholders that the portal will serve its intended purpose.

[8] “Denmark Design Report 2017–2019”, Independent Reporting Mechanism (IRM), https://www.opengovpartnership.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Denmark_Design-Report_2017-2019_EN.pdf.

[9] “Institutions near you”, Ministry of Children and Education Education Statistics, accessed 20 October 2019, available [in Danish] at https://uddannelsesstatistik.dk/Pages/dagtilbud_institutioner.aspx.

[10] The IRM researcher cannot ascertain whether this includes each facility in the country.

[11] “End-of-term report on Denmark’s OGP Action Plan 2017–2019”, Danish Agency for Digitisation, forthcoming.

[12] Rikke Wettendorff (the Danish Union of Early Childhood and Youth Educators (BUPL), interview by IRM researcher, 31 October 2019.