OSOR has published an update to the Denmark Country Intelligence report, highlighting recent trends and developments in the use of open source software (OSS) in the country and following up on the 2020 report. You can find the report here and the factsheet here.
This update report outlines the evolution in the use of OSS by the Danish public sector, at both national and local levels since 2021. In this update report you will observe how national policies have shifted away from OSS to focus on open data, as reflected in the National Strategy for Digitalisation. Nevertheless, the Danish Agency for Digital Government (AFD) manages the data viewer (Datavejviser), whose underlying IT system is a modified version of the open source system CKAN, operated on the State IT platform GvCloud, and has procured and developed guidelines on the use of OSS in relation with the goals set at national level. Also, the AFD caught up with the emergence of AI technologies and included information on OSS in their AI guidance. Thus, although OSS has only been mentioned to a limited extent in national policies, the AFD has continued to promote the use of OSS in the Danish public sector.
The active role of local authorities and private organisations remain crucial to ensure the use and deployment of OSS in the Danish public sector. In this regard, we have to highlight the role of the Danish municipalities' association (Kommunernes Landsforening - KL) and the non for profit association OS2. They have created a guide on the use of open source in 2021 and implemented OSS solutions such as OS2borgerPC or OS2kitos that are extensively use in the Danish public sector. Lastly, the company Magenta has contributed to use of OSS with initiatives such as OSdatascanner that aims to help the Danish public sector comply with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
This report has been enriched with the kind contributions of Rasmus Frey, Chief Executive and Secretary of OS2; Thor Schliemann, Information Architect at Danish Agency for Digital Government; Lasse Uhrskov Kristensen, PhD student at DTU Management; Maibritt Brink Larsen, Information Architect at Danish Agency for Digital Government; Line Laudrup, Chief Advisor at KL; and Morten Kjærsgaard, Founder and Director of Magenta.
