Development of framework and methodology to revise digital-readiness of existing Danish legislation

The European Commission provides support for the development and implementation of a framework to increase the digital-readiness in Danish legislation in support of an effort to systematically review existing legislation.

Context

In Denmark, the digital transformation of society has been underpinned since 2018 by efforts to ensure that new legislation is “digital-ready”. A secretariat for digital-ready legislation has been established in the Agency for Digitisation to support the effort. The secretariat is responsible for screening legislative proposals to ensure a consistently high quality of impact assessments relative to the above and to counsel and advise the Ministries in their efforts to ensure that new legislation is drafted to be digital-ready. A review of the effort suggests that while new legislation is overall digital-ready, legislation existing prior to 2018 has not been systematically reviewed by Ministries to establish the extent to which there is a need for revision. The lack of a systematic review of pre-existing legislation potentially presents a major obstacle to Denmark’s efforts to modernize its digital foundation and reap the benefits of modern digital services that present a coherent interface to citizens and businesses and enable efficient administrative workflows supported by the safe and secure reuse of data between authorities. While work is underway in niche areas to modernise existing legislation, related measures are of an uncoordinated, ad hoc nature limited to very specific needs and lacking the holistic perspective that would enable a more systematic prioritisation of modernisation efforts. Denmark still lacks an overall vision of how to make pre-existing legislation more digital-ready, as well as principles to guide and prioritise the transformation process.

Support delivered

The Commission, together with the OECD, has already produced an analytical report on the current situation of digital-readiness of Danish legislation as well as a methodology to review non-digital-ready legislation. The following two outputs are still outstanding:

• Communication material to disseminate the two already finalised deliverables mentioned above.
• An action plan for the implementation of the methodological guidance and recommendations on the revision of legislation for digital-readiness and future-proofing.

Expected results

Based on the developed methodology and the review of existing practices as well as the trial of the developed methodology it is expected that the issue of legacy legislation, potentially presenting a structural obstacle to the ICT modernization efforts at the level of the Danish central government, will have been significantly reduced by 2023. It is expected that the methodology developed will be taken forward by the Ministries with a view to developing individual action plans prioritising the review and revision of existing legislation that has yet to be made digital-ready. Consequently, all significant Danish legislation will be made digital-ready in the near future.