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Niels Fenger
Parliamentary Ombudsman
Digitisation of the public administration offers immense
potential. But a number of examples also indicate that
insufficiently thought-out IT systems can harm citizens’
legal rights. The Parliamentary Ombudsman will step up
his efforts within this field.
A woman wanted to help her mother with an
application for a technical aid. But the municipality’s digital self-service solution only allowed
the mother herself to apply. Consequently, it was
not possible to submit applications on behalf of
others as laid down in the Public Administration
Act (Case No. 2019-11).
In another case, the Danish Customs and Tax
Administration (SKAT) had put the IT system ‘Én
Skattekonto’ (‘One Tax Account’) into operation.
However, due to a system malfunction SKAT
could not charge interest from businesses for
more than two years (Case No. 2019-17).
The above cases are only two of many cases
about e-government which the Ombudsman
investigated in 2019. Both cases indicate that
the good intentions behind digital systems can
go astray if the systems are not configured correctly. Especially in the case about SKAT, it was
most unfortunate that an IT system with such
defects was put into operation in the first place.
It can happen to everyone that you forget to take
applicable law into account. But if the oversight
happens in relation to a digital self-service
solution, the individual error multiplies into a
cascade of errors. Unlike us human beings, digital solutions do not have bad days with inferior
performance. If there is a malfunction in a digital
solution, it will be repeated every day of the
week and every hour and minute of the day.
Therefore, digitisation of the public sector will
become a special focus area for the Ombudsman institution in the years to come.
Great potential for the welfare
society
These years, the public administration’s case
processing is undergoing significant changes
due to increased digitisation. Both the public
administration’s own working methods as well
as meetings between citizens and public administration are affected by digital self-service
solutions like www.borger.dk and automated
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