The Digital Transformation of Norway's Public Sector

Since its OECD Digital Government Review in 2017, the Norwegian government has pursued the strategic digitalisation of the public sector in line with its Digital Agenda, aiming to modernise, simplify, and improve the public sector. With this current strategy set to expire in 2025, Norway’s Ministry of Digitalisation and Public Governance is developing a new strategy for the digitalisation of the public sector to enable it to deliver more efficient, effective, and innovative public services.

This paper provides a ‘Pulse Check’ review of Norway’s digitalisation efforts to help the Government formulate concrete and actionable recommendations on digital government. It aims to guide and inform the development of the new digitalisation strategy to enhance the digital maturity of Norway’s public sector.

While Norway is a leader in digital government amongst OECD Member countries, there are some key areas that the government can include in the new digitalisation strategy to further enhance the efficiency, efficacy, and innovation of Norway’s public sector. These include:

• Digital Governance: Norway has a strong digital governance model to drive the digitalisation of the public sector at multiple levels. However, there is opportunity to renew this governance model to bolster the role of its key actors, foster a more coherent governance of digital investments, better address environmental impacts of digitalisation, and promote digital-ready legislation.

• Digital Government Investments: Norway has many of the elements needed to deliver the outcomes of its digital government investments, but it could benefit from integrating these into a more strategic whole-of-government model.

• GovTech: Norway’s StartOff programme was a strong example of the potential of GovTech, which could be reintroduced to support priority areas such as artificial intelligence and the ‘twin transition’ of digital transformation and the green transition.

• Digital Public Infrastructure: Norway's ‘national joint solutions’ form part of the country’s digital public infrastructure and support many solutions used by agencies, businesses, and citizens. However, satisfaction with these solutions is declining. By ensuring that they are secure, resilient, used widely across the public sector, and are maximising value to users, Norway could improve user satisfaction levels.

• Data access, sharing and re-use: Norway performs comparatively well in data access, sharing, and reuse in the public sector. However, there is opportunity to promote systematic re-use of data, improve data quality, and better understand the impact of data-sharing initiatives.

• Artificial Intelligence (AI): Norway has already -widely adopted AI across the public sector but greater co-ordination of these initiatives across the public sector could ensure that its use is effective, responsive, efficient, and accountable.

• Digital Talent: Norway has taken measures to address skills gaps but could benefit from a more strategic approach to better co-ordinate efforts to attract, retain, allocate and develop digital talent across the public sector.

• Service Design and Delivery: while Norway has made strong progress in developing user-centred digital services, there are opportunities for greater standardisation across its decentralised delivery model to keep pace with the evolving needs and expectations of users.

By working to address these areas, the Government could enhance its approach to digital government and maximise the potential for the successful development and delivery of the new strategy for the digitalisation of the public sector. This will ensure a mature digital government and a public sector that is agile and responsive to the evolving needs and expectations of its users for years to come.