In recent years, we’ve been in the midst of a technology-driven paradigm shift as profound as any in history. Demographic changes across Europe have created new service demands, raising questions about the public sector’s capacity to meet them. At the same time, governments are facing increasing expectations from users to deliver more innovative and responsive services in real or near-real time.
The Nordic region has already for a number of years been digitally mature with regards to the public sector. However, it is a strong political imperative to further improve the efficiency, effectiveness, and governance of the digital transition of the public sector. In 2017, the Ministers for Nordic Co-operation addressed the need for the Nordic and Nordic-Baltic co operation to leverage the potential of digitalisation with the ambition to support the region as a digital frontrunner. To accomplish this goal, they decided to establish a fixed-term council of ministers, MR-Digital, for the period 2018 to 2020.
Against this backdrop, NordForsk launched a Nordic-Baltic-United Kingdom research and innovation initiative on digitalisation of the public sector in 2019 to generate new knowledge useful to practitioners as well as policy-makers. The call was a collaboration between the Research Council of Norway, the Research Council of Finland, the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare (Forte), the Innovation Fund Denmark, the Estonian Research Council, the Latvian Ministry for Education and Science, the Economic and Social Research Council (part of UK Research and Innovation), and NordForsk.
The main aim of the call was to bring together knowledge-based digital innovation efforts with research on the effects and impacts on society and end-users. This includes exploring the key factors that enable and drive digital transformation in the public sector—such as emerging technologies, new organisational practices, and evolving regulatory frameworks and governance mechanisms.
Six excellent research projects which have targeted a wide range of digital solutions for the public sector were funded under this call. I am convinced that this collaboration has given us a deeper understanding of how to approach digital innovations in the public sector in the years to come, and we now have new knowledge on the advantages and challenges of sharing sensitive data.
At the same time, we saw that the 2020-2022 Covid-19 pandemic accelerated the development underscoring the gulf between those who are able to deploy new technology, and to develop and adapt their practices and value creation to new conditions, and those who cannot. This highlighted the need to address digital divides and ensure that digital transformation benefits all sectors of society.
Arne Flåøyen
Director of NordForsk