"The digital agenda for Sweden is now a broad and coherent strategy that focuses on how we can best use technology in the service of mankind," Minister Hatt said on the occasion of the presentation.
With 143 measures, the digital agenda for Sweden identifies four strategic areas of actions:
- Ease and security of use: As society becomes more and more digitised, it is important that everyone can exploit the opportunities created. This concerns, for example, the ability of everyone who so wishes to use the Internet and other digital services in everyday life, as private individuals, business operators or employees.
- Services that provide added value/benefits: People have varying needs for digital services in the different phases of their lives. Consequently a greater and more varied range of attractive and easy-to-use services is needed, from public and private actors alike. This kind of development stimulates the use of digital channels and contributes to making businesses more efficient.
- Infrastructure is needed: To make it possible to use and offer digital services, well-functioning electronic communications are needed. The Internet must be accessible and reliable, and data sent over the web must be handled securely. An important condition is that there is good access to telephony and broadband in all parts of the country. It is primarily the market actors who are responsible for, and invest in, communication networks.
- The role of IT for social development: Increased digitisation affects all parts of society, both in Sweden and globally. The development and use of IT also drives important social change - a more sustainable society and global development; research and innovation; people's freedom on the Internet; renewed forms of democracy; participation and transparency through increased openness.
The digital agenda for Sweden sets goals and challenges for the government in all policy fields. The resources to achieve the strategy goals are partly located at the Departement of Industry but they are also distributed over other government departments.
The largest investment will be dedicated to supporting broadband deployment - it will mobilise nearly SEK 500 million (approx. €57.8 million) over three years. Other core measures and respective investments include:
- Support to eGovernment services' development - SEK 91 million (approx. €10 million)
- Accessibility measures - SEK 145 million (approx. €16 million) per year
- Efforts to increase IT reliability - SEK 120 million (approx. €13 million) per year
The IT strategy also provides for actions in the field of eHealth (including test beds for new healthcare technologies) as well as of cultural initiatives such as the Heritage Initiative which will support the digitisation of public service broadcasters' archives.
A Commission for Digitisation will be established with the remit of following up the strategy's implementation. "Now the foundations for future work are laid down; in order to ensure that the digital agenda and its objectives are put into practice, we are setting up a Digitisation Commission that will make sure that the IT strategy is followed up and becomes a reality," Anna-Karin Hatt explained.
It is worth noting that the shaping of the digital agenda for Sweden which lasted for about a year involved many actors within and outside Government Offices. Indeed, organisations, agencies, companies and citizens contributed in various ways, through roundtable discussions, the Digitisation Council and online discussion fora.
"Transparency has been a crucial element of the [strategy's] design process. It is very gratifying that we received so many comments and ideas. This is a digital agenda for the whole of Sweden, not only the government's digital agenda. For Sweden to be able to fully exploit the opportunities of digitisation, the whole community needs to be involved, not just the public sector," the Minister explained.
About forty organisations and companies have already signed a letter of intent, which shows their support to the ambition of making Sweden use its digitisation capabilities best; in the letters of intent the signatories also describe how their organisation can contribute to the agenda's implementation. The opportunity to endorse the agenda as a signatory remains open, in a way to further engage the whole community.
Further information:
- Original news article - Government Offices (in Swedish)
- Related news article - Government newsletter
- IT in the service of mankind - A digital agenda for Sweden (in Swedish)
- Background information - ePractice eGovernment Factsheet for Sweden
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Quelle/Source: epractice, 19.10.2011
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