Debate: "Public actors with their own IT solutions are displacing the tech industry"

When public actors develop digital solutions in-house, there is a risk of inhibiting innovation, reducing security, crowding out private actors and wasting resources. This is what TechSverige's Christina Ramm-Ericson, head of industrial policy and chief economist, and Robert Liljeström, industrial policy expert, write in a debate article in NyTeknik.

The authors of the article write that the widely differing conditions between public and private sales activities lead to private actors being squeezed out through, for example, tax-financed underpricing or that the public sector favors its own sales activities in procurement or in the exercise of authority. One example is when municipally owned energy and fiber companies offer broadband services and IoT solutions for measuring electricity in competition with commercial operators.