Danish citizens are becoming ever more digital

2017 set a record for the danish citizens’ use of public sector digital services.

Records were set for the number of messages sent by Digital Post (the digital letter box provided by government to citizens and businesses for communications from and to public authorities) and for NemID (the public sector electronic ID and digital signature solution for authentication), where confidence again rose to an unseen high level. Finally, satisfaction with the national citizen portal borger.dk has never been higher. This news comes at a time when digitisation is becoming increasingly widespread, and communication between the public and the authorities is higher than ever before: whether it be by laptop, tablet, or mobile phone.

More users, more correspondence – greater flexibility

We are now seeing the best results for the use of Digital Post since it became mandatory by law to use in 2014. Now, only three percent of users forget to log in and check whether they have received a message from the authorities. And with 126 million messages, the authorities sent more messages to citizens’ digital letter box in 2017 than ever before. The same applies for the young, who had been behind the rest of the population for many years, but have caught up with adults in that by far the majority of 15-17 year-olds are now checking their Digital Post regularly.

Moreover, Danish citizens are not just using the digital services because they have to: fortunately, they are also very happy to use them. User satisfaction is extremely high, and we are very pleased about this. But we cannot rest on our laurels. We must always make sure we are in tune with the users of our services. This is crucial in order to establish better and more up-to-date public services, and it is one of the cornerstones in the work with the Coherency Reform that will be presented during 2018.

Bearing this in mind, we are also pleased that in upcoming years we will be providing Danish citizens with a NemID app as a supplement to the current cardboard list of once-off access codes. It is clear that more and more people want to access public authorities using their mobile devices. This applies in particular for young citizens, who are becoming more regular users of public digital services.

Focus on user-friendliness

We have made digital communication mandatory by law to use online in a number of areas. This puts us under an obligation to provide even better solutions. No matter how, and how often, people access the public digital services, they must always meet a high level of user-friendliness. Therefore, it is gratifying to note that the annual user survey continues to show a high level of user-friendliness. A full 87 percent of citizens consider that it is easy to find what they are looking for on borger.dk; an increase of as many as 6 percentage points. This demonstrates that, even though levels are high, there is always something we can do better.

For example, this year we have focussed on developing more personalised and tailored content. This means that, when delivering data from the authorities, we can provide users with customised user experiences with relevant data, for example on the individually customised “my page” on borger.dk.

Therefore, even though surveys show that we are well on the way, there’ is still a long way to go, especially in a digital reality on the move. What is good today will not necessarily be satisfactory in a year or two. So, there will be plenty for us to do in the years ahead!