The Digital Transformation of Norway's Public Sector

6. Digital public infrastructure

Abstract

While Norway’s ‘national joint solutions’ are a strong basis for the country’s digital public infrastructure, there is declining user satisfaction with these services. Norway could aim to evolve its ‘national joint solutions’ to ensure that they are secure and resilient, support interactions across sectors, and maximise value to users.

Digital public infrastructure (DPI) – including digital identity and other common, foundational systems – facilitates the vision of a mature, digital government that operates like a Government as a Platform. It ensures seamless and secure access to digital services and promotes efficiency through standardised and reusable tools. Norway's ‘national joint solutions’ initiative forms part of the country’s DPI and offers several solutions used by a majority of public agencies as well as businesses and citizens. However, challenges persist with declining satisfaction with these solutions due to difficulties in meeting evolving user needs.

Progress to date

Norway has made significant progress in DPI through its ‘national joint solutions’ initiative, aligning closely with Digitalisation Strategy Goal 5: "Municipal and central government agencies build their services on the basis of a common digital ecosystem for collaboration." (Digdir, 2023[1]) Launched several years ago, this initiative has produced 26 accessible national joint solutions, with 19 managed and directly provided by Digdir. Eleven solutions are open for use by private entities, and eight are free of charge, including the national cadaster register. Notable examples of joint solutions include ID-porten (a single-sign-on solution), Varsling (common notification), eBevis & eSignature, Altinn (common service platform), Basic data registers (including population register & company register), Styrning av tilgang (access control), and Digital postkasse (digital post) (Digdir, 2023[2]). Currently, 69% of public agencies in Norway use these joint solutions, with 66% expressing positive views on how they contribute to better solutions within their own organisations (Digdir, 2023[1]). In the 2023 DGI, Norway excels in digital infrastructure, scoring 81%, surpassing the OECD average score of 72%). Norway also ranks 3^rd out of 33 OECD countries in the Government as a Platform dimension of the DGI, with a score of 82% compared to the OECD average score of 61%. This success is primarily attributed to Norway's strong performance in the digital identity assessment. In the 2023 eGovernment Benchmark, Norway scored 91/100 in the indicator “key enablers” which includes eID and digital post, thus well above the EU27+ average of 71/100. “Key enablers” was the area in which Norway progressed the most compared to 2022 (European Commission, 2023[3]).

Remaining Challenges

However, challenges remain despite Norway's lead over other OECD countries in DPI. There is a reported decline in satisfaction with the ‘national joint solutions’. According to a recent survey, 42% of public agencies identify a lack of joint solutions in a shared ecosystem, across public sector domains, as an obstacle to developing seamless digital services. In additional, few public agencies report extensive use of other components supporting a common digital ecosystem, with only 30% using reference architecture and standards (Digdir, 2023[1]), which may be attributed to a lack of awareness of these resources. In interviews, some Norwegian civil servants have also highlighted the need to prioritise specific types of ‘national joint solutions’ as part of the new digital government strategy, such as secure messaging.

Skate (Digdir, 2023[4]) suggests that the decline is user satisfaction is due to the joint solutions not keeping up with the evolving needs of users, both from private and public institutions. Skate highlights the importance of financing for maintaining and developing these solutions and leaving room for continued improvement. Skate also advocates for better incentives for additional public bodies to contribute to and use existing joint solutions, and the need for ‘national joint solutions’ to better support interaction between actors across sectors and domains.

Recommendations

Based on these findings, the Government could consider incorporating the strategic objective below into its new digitalisation strategy, which could be achieved by addressing the associated recommendations:

Strategic objective: Digital Public Infrastructure

Norway could aim to evolve its ‘national joint solutions’ to ensure that they are secure and resilient, support interactions across sectors, and maximise value to users.

• Recommendation 9:

  The Government could strengthen the overall governance and funding model for the ‘joint national solutions’, focusing on the need for continuous investment throughout their lifecycle.

• Recommendation 10:

  The Government could prioritise the development of 'joint national solutions’ that support interaction, collaboration, and interoperability across sectors and domains to incentivise uptake, increase user satisfaction, and improve service delivery, based on stakeholder input.

• Recommendation 11:

  The Government could prioritise the development of 'joint national solutions’ that have already been identified by Norway as critical, such as common solutions for secure messaging.

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