Paper presented at the conference: Ireland, Europe and the Global Information Society, Dublin, April 24-25, 1997 .(1)
By Christian S. FRIIS (2)
The Danish government has decided upon a national information- and communication-technology strategy. The strategy is compared to the European Information Society initiative and the U.S. National Information Infrastructure project, and some differences are described. The Danish strategy, while trying to stimulate the development of the information society also sets out to "counterbalance" the market-forces of the information society by a) providing the public sector with a strong role, and b) trying to impose democratic values onto the evolving strategy. The experiences till now show, that the democratic values are not easily implemented.
During the 1990's the "Information Society" (IS) has moved from the research agenda into the political sphere. It is thereby transformed from an object of analysis and speculation to a manifest political project with evolving strategies and goals.
Parallel to the present global explosion of information and communication technology (ICT)(3), national governments in many countries are trying to develop suitable political strategies to handle this development and to take advantage of it, if possible. National ICT-strategies are mushrooming. But governments are sailing uncharted waters. Many questions and problems arise as the IS-project develops, and in this situation it seems fruitful to begin an exchange of early experiences and critical discussions from the different countries.
In this chapter the Danish National ICT-Strategy (DNICTS) is portrayed, as it may prove to distinguish it-self by its focus on the role that public administration can play in an IS-strategy and its ambitions regarding the democratic institutions in the IS.
To put the strategy into perspective, we shall begin by examining the phrase "Information Society", that the Danish government has made its slogan in the strategy. We shall also take a look on the European and the U.S. agenda from which the Danish strategy is clearly inspired, in order to find similarities and discrepancies.
In the analysis of the strategy we shall try to illuminate problems and unexpected consequences on the horizon as well as positive experiences. We shall pay particular attention to the implementation initiatives taken till now in order to fulfill the goals in the strategy. The chapter thus becomes a series of initial questions and remarks on the offset of a political voyage of unknown destination.
"We are in the midst of a revolution. A global short-circuit of time, space, persons and processes." (Dybkjaer, 1994) The very first sentence of the main document in the DNICTS reveals significant traces of the underlying pattern of thoughts. The sentence refers to the information society metaphor.
In the public debate, it is not often seriously doubted that we are at the threshold - or even in the midst - of major social change processes in which ICT plays a significant role. The term "information society" can be seen as a metaphor reflecting these changes. Allthough some critics point out that we may not face dramatic social transformation (Webster, 1995), and though it is by no means evident what the implications of the IS are, we have agreed to discuss the social consequenses of the massive diffusion of ICT and information under the label of IS.
The information society debate in the social sciences builds on the post industrialism discussion from the 1970's (Bell 1974, Tourraine 1974) and earlier works on the information economy (Machlup, 1962, Porat, 1977). The two themes share the common prediction of major social changes closely connected to the development of technology and ICT in particular. Early works (Dertouzos, 1980, Toffler, 1980, Masuda, 1981, Stonier, 1983) set the stage for present-day discussions. Some authors were inspired by the "holy ghost" of the new ICT, and foresaw a bright future, with more resourceful people, in interesting, challenging jobs in a still more democratic society. Others envisioned an "Orwellian" society, in which control and social cleavages dominated and predicted massive unemployment and alienating jobs. (4)
What we have learned from the development since then seems to be, that the simple technology-deterministic contributions have very limited predictive power(Friis, 1994). Zuboff (1989) rejects the deterministic ideas and directs our attention to the fact that ICT cannot be perceived as a socially determining technology. Rather it broadens up the horizon of possible social choices. Dunlop and Kling (1991) refer to the early positions as "technological utopianism" versus "technological anti-utopianism". While criticising the simplicity of the two extreme positions, the authors emphasise that one should not underestimate their importance in influencing our thinking, the public debate - in other words their effects on the IS discourse.
A thesis here is that the metaphor of the IS - if we conceive it as a social entity like for instance a discourse - is to some extent shaped by rather primitive assumptions on the relationship between ICT and society. If this is true, one can fear that the multitude of social choices to be made, as IS is being put on the political agenda, will be based on simplistic or even faulty assumptions.
Social choice is indeed at the essence of the present debate on national ICT-strategies, in Denmark, in Europe, in the United States and elsewhere. The choices made on a societal level, in organisations and by individuals, will reveal underlying assumptions on the role of ICT in societal development, in other words on the assumptions of the IS. They are likely to have deep and long-term consequences for society and its individual members. The study of these social choices will possibly allow us to reflect upon and perhaps refine and qualify the IS metaphor.
On the European level the IS has become a high-priority area. The issue was accelerated with the publication of the "Bangemann-report" (The High-Level Group, 1994). Named after the chairman of the "High-Level Group on the Information Society", commissioner Martin Bangemann, this report is a formulation of a European Union strategy towards the information society. It has become a major cornerstone of EU-initiatives as large parts of the recommendations in the report are now being implemented by the EU. Its main recommendations are that the most important regulative means available to bring about the information society are the upheaval of national tele-communication monopolies and the establishment of a genuine free unregulated and competitive information-market. In other words, the Bangemann-report speaks of a "market driven revolution", as "The prime task of government is to safeguard competitive forces and ensure a strong and lasting political welcome for the information society , so that demand-pull can finance growth, here as elsewhere." (The High-Level Group, 1994, p. 8)
The European vision of the IS, as formulated in the Bangemann-report holds great promises for the future of Europe:
"This revolution adds huge new capacities to human intelligence and ... changes the way we work together and the way we live together." We can expect "...a more caring European society with a significantly higher quality of life and a wider choice of services and entertainment" "The information society has the potential to improve the quality of life of Europe's citizens, the efficiency of our social and economic organisation and to reinforce cohesion". (The High-Level Group, 1994, p. 3 - 5)
The visions bare some resemblance to the early contributions of the "technological utopianists". The promises are not given without conditions though, and the report is not deterministic in that sense. Closer inspection reveals markedly differences in that the visions are combined with a distinct political strategy.
The political strategy is really a market-oriented or perhaps even a laissez-faire strategy. "The market will drive...the prime task of the government is to safeguard competitive forces" (The High-Level Group, 1994, p. 8). The recommendations to political decisionmakers are all based on the premise, that the free market, liberated from (state) monopoly and political interventions, will deliver the information society as described above.
The Bangemann report does not in any detail discuss potential problems of the IS, like for instance market-failures, the democratic aspects of the IS nor the possible redistribution of power and knowledge. In confronting the risk of the creation of a two-tier-society of have and have-nots, the report remarks, that such a risk is inherent in the process of structural change, and that it can only be met by "convincing people that the new technologies hold out the prospect of a major step forward... " (The High-Level Group, 1994, p. 6)
The absence of these discussions is probably due to the fact, that the Bangemann-report aims strictly at "getting the IS-train in motion".
Recent European Union documents (High Level Experts Group, 1996, Information Society Forum, 1996) have given the societal aspects of the IS-project more attention, and seem to have abandoned the "pure" market-oriented strategy:
"A regulatory framework which enables and stimulates everyone to reap the full economic and social benefits of the Information Society is an important priority. The essence of the task is to strike a balance which encourages market forces to lead the way, but which also recognizes that thay cannot do the job alone. Among other things, regulations must strenghten competition, pluralism and democracy, preserve and promote European cultures, including minority cultures, avoid monopolistic positions, guarantee open access to networks for content providers and guaranteee consumers' rights and protections." (The Information Society Forum, 1996, p. 11)
We shall return to the question of regulation of IS in the section on the Danish strategy. But before we proceed to Denmark, let us take a comparative look on the U.S. ICT-initiatives.
The European discussion is centered around the theme of IS. In the United States, the same issues are raised politically under the label of "Information Super Highways " or more precisely the "U.S. National Information Infrastructure Initiative" (NII). The visions of the NII are no less powerfull than the European:
"The information infrastructure of the 21st centry will enable all Americans to access information and communicate with each other easily, reliably, securely and cost effectively in any medium - voice, data, video - anytime, anywhere. This capabilitiy will enhance the productivity of work and lead to dramatic improvements in social services, education and entertainment." (President's Council on Competitiveness, quoted from Kling, Kraemer, 1995 p. 12)
In the NII, which is eagerly pursued by the Clinton administration, and most strongly by Vice President Al Gore, we find the same fundamental belief as in the Bangemann-report in the ability of the free market forces to create the IS. Gore says:
"We are steering a course between a kind of computer-age Scylla and Charybdis - between the shoals of suffocating regulation on the one side, and the rocks of unfettered monopolies on the other. Both stifle competition and innovation." (Gore, 1993)
Gore has a firm belief, that public regulation should primarily be concerned with promoting and protecting competition on the information markets. This will lead to lower prices on the information-services and then in turn help to "avoid creating a society of information "haves" and "have nots"".
If we look into the documents describing European and American (political) thinking on the IS, it seems that what we are finding is remniscents of the early IS-contributions. There is a strong belief that the IS is a better society, with a significantly higher quality of life. The IS is a revolutionary and radical social transformation, that will affect each and every citizen profoundly. The revolution is mainly conceived as ICT-induced. We are not through with deterministic thinking on technology in this sense.The stragies also stress the inevitability of the develeopment, thereby creating a climate, where it is seen as a necessity to "get on the IS-train" - we cannot escape it. Both the strategies mentioned adopt the fundamental political and economic conviction, that the free market-forces will prepare the way for the benefits of the IS. Recent trends in the European strategy however, tends to stress the necessity of some kind of public regulation of the information society. It remains yet to bee seen however, what the actual outcome of these recommendations shall be, and the main direction for political action still seems to be to diminuish the regulative bonds, that inhibit the market from development. On the European agenda this is primarily implemented through the upheaval of national tele-communication monopolies.
So we may be seeing the unfolding of a simplistic "political IS-metaphor" discarding some of the nuances from social scientific research in the IS, which will possibly lead to naive exaggerations of the possible benefits that can be reaped from the evolving IS and possibly also an underestimation of the implicit dangers involved.
In the following part we shall give the Danish strategy a closer look in order to find similarities and discrepancies.
In October 1994 a government-appointed committee in Denmark published a report called "Information Society 2000" (Dybkjaer, 1994). The report has been received with great interest - till now more than 20.000 copies have been sold to the public - and the conclusions from the report constitute a framework within which a national ICT-strategy is gradually unfolding. The Danish government has formed a ministry of research and ICT, and the minister has begun the process of accomplishing the goals from the report. (Forskningsministeriet, 1995a)
In many ways the report and the resulting political initiatives can be seen as a follow-up on the Bangemann-report, with some notable exceptions.
The Danish report is interesting, not only as the first attempt to formulate such a strategy in Denmark, but also because it tries to discuss the possibilities of enforcing certain political values - here labelled "special Danish values" - onto the strategy. These values can be interpreted as a preliminary outline of emerging democratic themes in the IS. This distinguishes the Danish report markedly from the Bangemann-report. An other feature of the report is the assignment of a strong role to play for public administration in the implementation of the strategy. This is a departure from the "market-driven" revolution. We shall first examine some strategic goals from the report, and then proceed to the political initiatives taken till now, to ensure the implementation of the strategy.
The report is not modest in its goal-setting. 17 key areas are identified, implicitly mapping the national government structure, so that each ministry has goals to pursue, and 25 main principles are proposed. Of the multiple goals, two in particular stand out, when comparing the strategy with the European and American thinking, described above; one is the very strong role that the public sector is assigned, an other is the attempt to formulate principles of "value" to guide the different initiatives.
In general, the report points out two major roles for public administration to play in the unfolding of the strategy:
1) To be an advanced user of ICT, thereby setting an example
2) To provide new and better services to the public and industry
We shall examine the different roles in the following part.
The public administration as an advanced ICT-user.
The Danish public administration has a record of intensive ICT-usage. Through large public ICT-service-organisations as "Datacentralen" (central government-level) and "Kommunedata" (Municipality-level), many unique services to public agencies have been provided (Andersen et. al. 1993, Froekjaer, Korsbaek, 1992), and the number of computers per employee in public administration is high in international comparison. It is fair to say, that the development was centralized, through common applications-development, common service-organizations and public procurement policies.
The very size of the Danish public administration, with some 800.000 employees (approx. 30 % of the workforce) , implicates, that the strategy cannot easily treat the user-role of public administration with negligence. By bringing public administration to the forefront of technological usage, by leading the way, it is hoped that both industry and the general public can be influenced, by a multitude of spinn-offs. One example from the strategy could be the implementation of Electronic Document Interchange (EDI). Not only is industry urged to implement EDI, but public administration takes the lead. From 1996, public procurement was supposed to be EDI-based, and by the year 2000, any information exchange to and from public administration should comply to the EDI-standards (Dybkjaer, 1994, p. 77). The development since then has demonstrated that the development is not going so fast as originally expected, but now a specific strategy for the implementation of EDI has been decided. (Forskningsministeriet, 1996b)
The provision of new and better public services
The report envisages a so-called "Public Services Network" (PSN), an integrated strategy to develop the "digital public sector". Some main points in the PSN are:
(Dybkjaer, 1994, p. 8) (6)
The goals concerning the public sector envisages two parallel developments. One is an increased openness and transparency. Citizens shall have easier access to public information and it shall be easier to communicate with the authorities. (7) The second is increased efficiency. The efficiency-argument often accompanies ICT-projects (this goes for the private sector as well) but is rarely documented. The potential problems involved here is that openness and efficiency can conflict with each other (Demchak, Friis, 1995).
It is evident however, that the DNICTS assigns the public sector a much more active role in the development of the IS, than does the European or American documents decribed above.
The so-called "special Danish values" refer implicitly to some of the characteristics of the Danish welfare state. The report tries to translate some of these characteristics to strategic goals. The intention is to create a political counterbalance to the forces of the free market. At least in its visions, the DNICTS is based on almost opposite fundamental values compared to for instance the Bangemann-report. We may suspect from the Dybkjaer-Christensen report that free market-forces will not necessarily provide universal access to information, support democracy and weak members of society etc.
By a conscious effort, based on these values and by realising comprehensive use of ICT in society, we achieve the best guarantee, that the information society does not lead to a division of the Danes into an information-technological A and B-team." (Dybkjaer, 1994, p. 24)
The report states, that these values are overarching goals that should disseminate throughout every initiative in the strategy. At a first glance, these values seem evident, and one cannot easily disagree on the content. Nevertheless, they are an attempt to formulate general qualitative objects for the development of the IS. If we take them at face value, they are political statements on the fundament of regulative intiatives concerning the IS. The question is, if these ÒvaluesÓ can actually guide the implementation process, and if they can actually unfold as manifest regulative initiatives. On this "rhetorical level" we thus find a marked difference between the Danish strategy and the European and American intiative described above.
When examining the initiatives we shall bear in mind that the process involved began October 1994 with the publication of the report. Actual political initiatives wasnÕt taken till 1995. Therefore, it is naturally somewhat premature to make final evaluations, though some tendencies are emmanating. I have again selected the initiatives taken in the two main categories: the initiatives regarding the public administration, and the "value-oriented" initiatives. The aim is to confront the goals from the report with the actual initiatives.
This category is by far the largest, and prominent in this category are the initiatives concerning the liberalization of the national telecommunication infrastructure and service production. In April 1995, the first law-package went through parliament, and the next phase is initiated. The government looks ahead to the 1st of January 1998, where, according to agreements in the European Union, full liberalization of the construction and operation of telecommunication infrastructure will exist on the European markets.
Some of the initiatives taken will potentially cripple the monopoly status of the national telecommunication provider, Tele Danmark. Prices on broadband-based connections will be much lower and other service-providers can now access the broad-band-infrastructure. It will be easier to establish privately owned infrastructure, and the political regulation of Tele Danmark is upheaved. For some time Tele Danmark will still posess a de facto monopoly, but the DNICTS has now opened up to possible competitive entrants, and there seem to be considerable interest in the market amongst several international service-providers (Forskningsministeriet, 1995a, 1995b)
The consequenses for public administration of this liberalization process - not counting Tele Danmark - are not clear for the moment. It seems possible though, that the dependence of both central government and local authorities on service providers as Kommunedata and Datacentralen may diminish over time. We may also see, that if the result of the process is actually markedly lower prices on telecommunication services and traffic, public agencies will tend to use networking facilities to a more intensive degree, than has previously been the case. This is of course guesswork, as the results are yet to be seen.
Regarding the Public Services Network (PSN), several initiatives have been taken. E-mail adresses have been established in most central government institutions during 1996 (Forskningsministeriet, 1996a) and local authorities are rapidly following. Ministries are presently reporting on the recycling of data in the public administration within their specific domains, and of their plans to develop electronic service systems and bulletin boards to the public. The fate of the electronic citizens card is as yet unclear. (8) The Office of Public Information is gathering data to build an "Electronic Guide to the Danish Society". (9) The Ministry of Research heads an initiative intended to be effective in 1998, from where any government publication will be available in digital form - free or at a cost. The original deadline on this target has been extended. Also the proclamation of laws and other judicial statements shall gradually be digitalized till the year 1998. It has now been decided to establish a central, electronic directory of private companies. This was meant to be effectuated in 1996, but also that deadline is surpassed.
The report foresees organizational changes in the public administration as necessary. It is not clear however, in which direction the organizational change processes will head. Therefore a number of so called "pilot-projects" or experiments are initiated in government institutions as well as in local authorities. 10 municipalities have been selected as so-called "spear-head-municipalities" to experiment with and promote advanced usage of ICT, paperless-offices, new electronic services to citizens, etc.
Public agencies will gradually transfer their procurement procedures to EDI. An actionplan has recently been published as mentioned above (Forskningsministeriet, 1996b).
A question remains, however. While the provision of new electronic services is certainly a possibility, it is still an open question whether new services will be better services, and if better, better by what measure? If, in fact, electronic services are implemented on behalf of other services, how do we ensure, that the services are still public? At March, 1996, 47 % of the households in Denmark were equipped with a PC (Forskningsministeriet, 1996) but only 12 % of the households possesed PC's equipped with a modem (Forskningsministeriet, 1996a). So here, even if the figures are quickly increasing (10), the question of universal access is crucial. The technical issues involved are overseeable, but the political and the democratic problems are not easily solved.
When we take into consideration that these intiatives have been developed in less than three years, the number of initiatives is impressive. What we see is a combination of a highly operationalized report from the committe, a decisive ministry of research, combined with a rather intensive public debate. These elements together have created the political climate in which these changes can occur.
It seems evident that the goals of the ICT-strategy regarding the public administration are to be achieved primarily by indirect political means. We have a combination of very few "musts" (f.inst. the decision to create e-mail addresses in all public agencies) and a lot of incentives. There are few rules or prescriptions for the actual ICT-development in government agencies. On the other hand, the strategy also seems to be encouraging an experimental climate, particularly regarding the new organizational transformation processes. The initiatives are based on the firm belief, that the public administration can lead the way, and that this in turn can create positive spin-offs in the private sector. In this way the strategy may depart from the previous centralized steering of ICT in Danish public administration.
When we turn to the "Danish values", the initiatives are few till now.
An action plan in order to use ICT to support and integrate different groups of disabled people in society has been decided. Rather vague ideas and some experiments have been presented in order to possibly create a "Danish Cultural Network", in which libraries, museums and other cultural institutions cooperate and expose their ressources electronically. In the area of education, several initiatives have been taken. In primary schools the goals are to place ICT in a central position on all levels. Whereas for now primary schools have 1 computer per 40 pupils, the goal is to have 1 computer per 5-10 pupils. Teachers are to be re-educated and the primary schools will be integrated through a school-network. The municipalities, responsible for primary schools, are complaining that this massive investment is not followed by increased grants from central government, so these may be distant goals. In higher education and the research community, the goal is to ensure better and more intensive use of the international networks.
What we find is that, roughly speaking, the implementation till now has not explicitly dealt with the Danish values. We can turn back to the report from the committe and we find also here a certain vagueness when it comes to concrete proposals or initiatives regarding these values.
Let us take a look at the problems involved here. The Danish values are a way of expressing some of the basic democratic values, that our society is based upon. Democracy constitutes specific institutions, cultures, norms administrative practices, etc. But what happens when fundamental changes occurs in the organization of society, as the information society may indicate? The answer is, that many of the democratic procedures and institutions have to be reinvented, to be reinstitutionalized, perhaps over long periods of time. Many of the questions involved can simply not be answered for the moment. Let me give two examples of the difficulties involved.
One question involves what can be referred to as universal or free access. In the same way that many Danish public services are provided to the public for free, it is the idea in the strategy, that access to (public) information should also be free or very cheap. At a first glance this seems a matter of computers. But computers are becoming cheaper, and an analogy to telephones or television reveals that this technology will probably be in our homes to the same degree that the telephone or the television, within very few years. How then to define universal access? How is universal acces realised in a world where liberalization and privatization of telecommunication is the norm?
The report also states, that ICT "should support democracy and individual access to influence" (Dybkjaer, 1994, p. 24) What does this mean ? How can it be reformulated as a political initiative? How do we make sure that it actually happens? What are democratic institutions in a networked society going to look like?
These questions call for careful consideration, speculation, discussion and research. Nobody can presently answer these questions in full. So we may chose to understand these values as "political candy" to ease the swallowing of the "ICT-pill", or we may chose to understand them as a serious political statement, commiting the political system to develop them in time. In this sense, the implementation of the Danish National ICT-strategy is much more in accordance with the goals from the Bangemann-report, than a first glance would reveal.
There can be little doubt, that the present implementation process of the DNICTS marks the beginning of major changes in the Danish society.
An examination of the political initiatives following the Dybkjaer report reveals several interesting preliminary results.
The roles that public administration is supposed to play in the national ICT-strategy are not unproblematic, but implementation is proceeding pretty much along the guidelines from the original report. The task of bringing the public sector to the forefront of ICT-usage is enormous, but can be acheived. It is still an open question, however, what it means to be at the forefront, and we may also ask, what the consequences might be? Should public administration develop into a high-tech experimental "learning" organization and how does this fit in with the traditional roles of public administration? Clearly, what is involved here is not merely technology-issues. It seems as though the main problem is one of organisational development. The strategy as well as the implementation initiatives give no leads to which organisational tranformations should be initiated. Important problems will be the management and governability of a highly networked and decentralized public administration, the building of a digital interface between the public and the public administration and the handling of organisational leak backs that will occur from this interface, security and privacy issues confronting the demand for transparancy and increased levels of information that will surely be facing public administration on the digital interface.
Providing new and better public services is technically feasible but depends on the degree to which ICT-usage can be developed, and to a large extent on the necessary organisational changes. Furthermore it is still an open question whether these new services are "better". The main problem however, is, that we do not have any certain knowledge of the consequences of establishing a "digital interface" between the public and the public administration, and we will be sailing uncharted waters.
The DNICTS is based on the premise, that the information society needs public regulation. It tries to formulate the fundament of such a regulation in what is called Danish values - meant to provide a counterbalance to the free market forces. A closer inspection of these values reveals, that the political implications of these values are not at all clear. Thus it comes as no big surprise, that the implementation process till now has not given these values any considerable attention. The theoretical problems involved here, may be be even larger than the implementation problems. How are we to know what democratic structures and institutions in the information society will look like or how they eventually will unfold? By which means can public administration guarantee such uncertain and vague values? It seems evident that a large proportion of problems will stem from attempts to implement Danish values in the strategy. The report simply does not reveal how these values are to be implemented, and generally lacks a deeper debate on the subject of how to impose certain political values onto a major technology-based societal transformation which is, by the way, an ongoing process, irrespective of this report.
In confronting the DNICTS with the European IS-visions, primarily represented by the Bangemann-report we find notorius differences and some similarities. The DNICTS in words recommends strong regulation and political steering of the IS-project. The implementation initiatives till now seems at the same time to be biased towards the market-oriented stategy, with the exception of the role played by public administration. We shall have to follow closely the upcoming political initiatives in order to evaluate the evolving meaning of the notion of Danish values. Someday social scientists may be able to make research results influence the somewhat simplified "political metahor of the information society", that seems to be evolving these years.
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1: Parts of this paper has previously appeared in Friis, 1997.
2: Christian S. Friis is Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Sciences, Roskilde University, Denmark. E-mail : friis@forv.ruc.dk, Postal Adress: Dept. of Social Sciences, Roskilde University, Building 23.2, P.O.Box 260, DK-4000 Roskilde, Denmark, Tel: +45 46 75 77 11 ext 2179.
3: Throughout the paper the notion of ICT is used, though the use of Information Technology (IT) is frequently used by the sources to cover the same meaning.
4: Webster, 1995 has an excellent overview of selected parts of the IS-litterature in the social sciences.
5: For approximately 30 years, Denmark has been registering its citizens meticulously. Every new-born child or immigrant is assigned a so-called CPR-number to be produced whenever one contacts a public authority. This means that a lot of information about citizens (where they live, if they are married, how old they are etc.) is kept in public records, and this of course eases the burden of transforming the records to a digital form.
6: All translations from Dybkjaer, 1994 are made by the author.
7: Thus the notion of the "24-hour local government" that has been put forward in the debate.
8: The notion of an electronic citizens card spurred a huge public debate in which Orwellian pictures of the IS were predominant. Since this debate no public authorities have pursued the issue further. Politically the idea is a "dead herring" (Danish notion)
10: A betavarsion of which is available at URL: http://www.si.dk/sam/key/ - in Danish language
11: In 1994 when the Dybkjaer report was published only 27 % of the households owned a PC (Dybkjaer, 1994).