IfG.CC - The Potsdam eGovernment Competence Center

FiksGataMi is a nationwide service to report faults and problems in the public sphere of local government, including holes in the road, graffiti, unauthorised dumping of rubbish and defective street lighting. Using the FiksGataMi website, citizens are able to report problems they have found to the relevant municipality or discuss them with other users.

The Norwegian Minister of Modernisation, Morten Andreas Meyer, has promised that his government will stop using proprietary software and transfer to open source

Speaking at the eNorge 2009 conference Meyer outlined an initiative to digitise government relations. This includes a commitment that all public institutions will plan the introduction of open source systems by next year.

Compulsory, but to whom?

It is unclear to whom B2G e-invoicing will become compulsory. Hans Christian Holte, the director general of DIFI says that all suppliers, SME’s and one-(wo)man firms, must send their invoices electronically to the Norwegian public sector.

The data set, which was recently given to Norway’s agency for Public Management and eGovernment (Difi), provides information on nearly 950,000 registered businesses in Norway.

86 per cent of the citizens of Norway think that their country is close to being a perfect country to live in. We are also satisfied with public services. The highest level of satisfaction is enjoyed by, among others, the public library, the state owned vine and liquor store operator Vinmonopolet and the colleges of higher learning. At the lower end of the satisfaction scale are institutions like the municipal planning and building office, the Norwegian railway NSB and the Norwegian Welfare and Labour Administration NAV. These are conclusions from the nationwide Citizen Survey which measures how satisfied Norwegian citizens are with municipal, regional and government services.

DIFI's plans include the integration in several phases of the personalised, one-stop self-service portal 'Miside' ('MyPage', in English) with the existing 'Noreg.no' in an aim to further structure the eGovernment portal around citizen needs and daily lives. The new Noreg.no will still be a guide to public information and services and it shall facilitate contacts between citizens and the Public Administration.

Nine out of ten Norwegians would like to communicate with their doctor over the Internet. So reveal the results of a survey conducted by the Norwegian Board of Technology ('the Board') among a sample of 1098 citizens. The Board unveiled the 'patients' electronic wish list': 85 % of the surveyed people want to be able to book their medical appointments on the Internet; 73 % wish to have their prescription of sick leave renewed online; 65 % would like to receive the results of blood test by electronic means; 50 % wish to apply for or receive referrals online; 43 % would appreciate asking questions on disease and health through the web. On the contrary, only 9.4 % of the sample does not want to communicate with their general practitioner (GPs) online.

In practice, when the patients participating in the pilot need a prescription, their doctors send it to a central database via their computer. The only thing the patients need to do to have the medicines delivered at the pharmacy, is to provide their social security number to the chemist.

This shows the success of OEP among citizens since its launch in May 2010. It is also worth noting that since 4 October 2010, the mail records of 17 new agencies have been made available in the OEP. An additional 21 agencies will soon follow, 18 of which include county governments. This means that by the end of October 2010, 70 government agencies will have joined the OEP.

“It is very gratifying that the Ministry’s communication with the public through the Internet has been noticed and appreciated,” said Foreign Minister Jan Petersen in response to the news that Norway – the official site, which won the Norwegian Design Council’s Award for Design Excellence last year, has now received the World Summit Award Norge in the e-Government category.

his award is an international recognition of Norwegian pioneering work, says Minister of Government administration and reform, Heidi Grande Roeys.

In a move that echoes an earlier high-profile migration by the German city of Munich, authorities in the Norwegian city of Bergen have opted to replace existing core Windows and Unix systems with Linux.

Eine Empfehlung an die norwegische Regierung sieht vor, künftig auf das offene Office-Format OpenDocument (ODF) zu setzen. Ergänzend dazu sollen alle Behördeninformationen als PDF-Dokument abgelegt werden. Eine klare Absage erteilte ein beauftragtes Gremium dem Office-Format von Microsoft.

Konkret bedeutet die Regelung, dass HTML das Format der Wahl für die Veröffentlichung von Informationen im Internet ist. Für Dokumente, deren Aussehen unverändert bleiben soll, wie zum Beispiel Formulare, setzt Norwegen auf das PDF-Format (PDF 1.4 oder neuer, beziehungsweise PDF/A ISO 19005-1). Für Texte, die dem Anwender eine Bearbeitung erlauben sollen, schreibt man den ISO-Standard ODF (ISO/IEC 26300) verbindlich vor. Die Entscheidung für das Open Document Format kommt nicht überraschend: Das norwegische Komitee für Standards hat sich im September in erster Instanz gegen Microsofts OpenXML als ISO-Standard ausgesprochen.

Anders als in manchen Medien gemeldet, ist dies zunächst eine reine Server-Umstellung. Die rund 50.000 PCs in Verwaltung und Schulen werden zunächst nicht umgestellt, da diese »bereits bezahlt sind« und »es nicht ökonomisch wäre, jetzt schon umzustellen«.

In Norwegen können Handy-Besitzer ihre Steuererklärung in diesem Jahr zum ersten Mal auch per SMS einreichen.

As clear as mud

“We made a survey that showed us that as many as one in three Norwegians struggle to understand letters from the government and its branches. The complex language found in laws and regulations often makes its way onto the forms and letters citizens have to fill out,” Rigmor Aasrud, the Minister of Government Administration, Reform, and Church Affairs, tells The Foreigner by email.