Time for welfare technology

We have finally learned who will be responsible for implementing the Digital Agenda. This week, Jan Gulliksen was appointed chairman of the Digitalization Commission, and we would like to welcome him to an important position. Jan is a professor at KTH in human-computer interaction. This is good knowledge to have, because the mission is about making things easier and better for everyone - with the help of IT. To be honest, we have seen a few complicated IT solutions over the years - so knowledge of usability is probably not entirely wrong.

Last week, together with the Ministry of Enterprise and Innovation, we also organized a hearing on e-government. We were given a presentation on the direction of the new e-government strategy, to be released this autumn, and participating companies had the opportunity to give their views. A central theme is open data and open interfaces. By releasing public data, companies can create new services that ultimately increase both customer benefit and business for companies. I think this is an exciting vision, and I can see how, for example, municipalities buy a basic package of services, which can be supplemented with other services that I as a citizen can choose freely on the communication channel of my choice.

I think there is still a lot of thinking and work to be done before the vision can become reality: standardization of concepts and interfaces, business development based on customer focus and customer benefit, and what should the procurement process look like? And how do you ensure the robustness of the whole chain when the user can choose the service? Interesting questions and hopefully this is the beginning of a completely new way of looking at the business support and citizen focus of authorities and municipalities. At the hearing, comments were heard such as - "we need something new - we have reached the end of the road with the procurement of systems that all look different and that together do not work well together. And that also locks the customer in".

So it's high time for welfare technology.