There is an opportunity for genuinely better public services if governments can operate real-time services.

Citizens could be proactively told about a change to their entitlements because a child has reached school age, or to track the exact stage their application is at, rather than pick up the phone. Businesses could be started in real-time and those businesses could benefit from real-time tax calculations.

Public servants and politicians could spot problems with a service before they become a nationwide problem, and improve their policies on a cycle of weeks and months not years.

Denmark's digital strategy
Denmark has had clear and careful digitalization goals in place for over 20 years. In their Digital Denmark: Conversion to the network society report (1999), the Ministry of Research and Information Technology outlined many objectives that established the path the Danish Public Sector would walk over the next two decades. These included:
• Life-long learning: “Denmark [should] be the first country in the world, to ensure its citizens access to life-long learning via the network society.”
• Digital administration: “at the latest by 2003, Danish public administration is to provide the best and most efficient public service in the Nordic countries with the help of digital administration.”
• Danish internet initiatives: “participation in democracy, open decision-making processes and Danish cultural activities to be supported by new and interactive Internet services for all citizens by 2003 at the latest.”

These goals set the foundation that facilitated Denmark’s rise to becoming a world leader in digital government.


1. Denmark's digitalization saves huge sums
The time and resource saving benefits of digitalization are often touted in reports and surveys, but Denmark’s digitalization offers a real-world example of just how profound the benefits can be.
Government data shows Denmark’s digitalization effectively saves 296 million EUR ($317.7 million USD) annually and has reduced processing time by 30% across departments.

2. Denmark's public services create satisfied & trusting citizens
Reports indicate citizens who are satisfied with public services are nine times more likely to trust their government than those who are not.

First, by educating citizens about digitalization, they ensured digital technology could be used by the public with less friction.

Second, by committing to digital administration, they set out update legacy systems and create efficient and effective digital public services for citizens and government employees.

And third, by incorporating the internet into their democracy and cultural activities, they made not just top-down political changes, but citizen-centered cultural changes.

Today, Denmark’s Agency for Digital Government continues to update its digital strategy with new reports every 4 years. It regularly engages in public-private partnerships to boost its digital capabilities. And it consistently improves services with a focus on inclusion and engagement for citizen centricity.


Is this the case for Denmark?

Well, in Denmark, 91% of citizens who accessed an authority’s website or used self-service solutions were satisfied. The European Commission ratedDenmark’s digital public services a score of 87.1, 19 points above the EU average of 68.1.
Across the four major areas of public service delivery, Denmark (displayed below in orange) outperforms OECD averages (displayed in green).

While there’s no way to trace a direct link, the Danish government has some of the highest levels of citizen trust in the world. 72% of Danish citizens express trust in their government, compared to the OECD average of just 51%.

Additionally, 81% of Danes trust the Danish authorities to handle their personal information carefully.

This trust has a cyclical effect. The trust Danes have in government means they’re more likely to embrace government initiatives. This makes government initiatives more likely to succeed. When these initiatives succeed, Danes are more likely to feel that their government works for them. And this circles back to building more trust.
Creating trust in government is always important, but as we’ll get into, it becomes essential during times of crisis.

3. Denmark's digital government proves it pays to be prepared
Denmark’s Government's advanced digitalization meant when COVID-19 hit, they were well prepared.
Not only were all their public services already accessible online, but their NemID system helped them become one of the first countries in the world to introduce COVID-19 passports.

The existing eID infrastructure allowed these COVID passports to be created more easily in a secure way citizens were already familiar with. In just 11 months, citizens accessed COVID-19 passports and test results 100 million times.
Throughout the uncertainty of the pandemic, the Danish Government used Digital Post to communicate updated rules and restrictions and inform citizens about stimulus benefits, vaccines, and public health strategies.

When the government distributed stimulus benefits, they already had everyone in the country’s NemKonto, a ready-to-go bank account for them to deposit funds into. In Autumn 2020, this enabled the automatic payment of government stimulus checks to two million inhabitants in less than 8 days.

With a massive 90% of Danes reporting trust in the Danish health authorities, citizens were more prepared to follow health advice. At the height of the pandemic, more than 60% of Denmark’s adults were getting weekly COVID-19 tests.

And finally, when vaccination registrations were announced, the Danish government avoided the website crashes and issues faced across the U.S., Asia, and Europe. Instead, they had a virtual waiting room in place that ensured their registration website remained online and citizens received fair and equal access to the essential service.

“Streaming data” or “real-time data” is dynamic data that is continuously generated from a variety of sources like sensors, cameras, social media feeds, and cameras. Examples of real-time data are e-commerce purchases, geo-location tracking, server activity, health data, website activity, weather events, and utility service usage.

When companies can process all that data as it’s coming in, they can near-instantaneously gain insight and understand exactly what’s going on with their customers or internal business processes.

Traditionally, data analysis happens once the data has been captured and stored. Then any business insights are pushed out from storage. But real-time data analysis replaces that process, helping companies make more accurate decisions and take action significantly faster.

Companies can use real-time data analytics to:
• Predict customer behaviours
• Solve the technical problems associated with typical data batching processing
• Scale faster
• Make better business decisions
• Act proactively to maximise customer satisfaction
• Increase reaction time
• Create more intelligent products and services
• Improve and automate business processes

Real-Time Technology has the power to revolutionize the creative process across all industries. Being able to make instantaneous decisions within an interactive environment is utterly transformative. It empowers you to make big changes and see them immediately in context. This is a better, quicker, and much more efficient way of creating content.