Denmark’s Agency for Digitisation considers the country’s switch to ‘Digital Post’ a success. With one month to go before the official project deadline, Digital Post now reaches 89% of all Danes over 15 years of age, well above the 80% target. The agency says Digital Post may result in savings of over EUR 100 million per year.
Denmark’s Digital Post allows citizens to correspond electronically with public authorities. Examples include letters from hospitals, pension statements, student grant applications, and correspondence with the tax administration. Users can access Digital Post on two secure websites borger.dk and e-boks.dk.
Not only do Danish citizens use the eGovernment service, the country’s public administrations send millions of digital letters, the Agency for Digitisation (Digitaliseringsstyrelsen) reports. “From January to mid-October, public administrations sent 63,600,000 digital letters. That is far more than in all of 2014, when 47,900,000 digital letters were sent.”
Digital Ambassadors
The Agency describes Digital Post as “one of the most ambitious initiatives in digital communication in the country”. The agency attributes its success to the support, education and information campaigns that it has organised since 2012. In municipalities, the project was encouraged by 7,000 ‘digital ambassadors’, Thomas Frandzen, special advisor to Digitaliseringsstyrelsen, said at a conference in Leicester (UK), on 19 October.
Each of the project’s milestones was accompanied by a massive information campaigns, targeted at companies, retirement homes, shopping malls, social housing and primary and secondary schools among others. The agency also took great care to address the special needs of the elderly, immigrants, persons with disabilities and the homeless, making sure that these were aware of the transition, and organising exemptions if needed.
More information:
Announcement by the Agency for Digitisation (in Danish)
Announcement by the Agency for Digitisation
Presentation by Thomas Frandzen at Socitm (PDF)
About Digital Post