Norway has increased the scope of an already-ambitious multi-branched technology expansion plan by establishing a National Digitisation Forum (NDF), tasked with serving as an advisory hub to help shape future government policy in the focal areas of digital transformation and artificial intelligence (AI).
The NDF will serve as a meeting space for technology experts, ministers with technology briefs, senior civil servants, and trade union and business leaders. Among other roles, the NDF will explore how trust, available data, robust privacy and effective regulations can be merged and built into advances in AI going forward.
The primary framework underlying the NDF’s mission will aim to drive digitisation in Norway while providing the tools, in terms of strategic policy proposals, to enable the government to better prepare for the changes and challenges new technologies present to general society, climate, energy and the green transition.
The launch of the NDF takes place against a backdrop of anticipation, and the expectation that the Norwegian government will deliver a new National Digitization Strategy (NDS) by the end of 2024.
Norway needs to become simultaneously more aggressive in the digitisation domain and a critical user of technology, said Karianne Tung, Norway’s minister for digitisation and public administration.
“We must accelerate the pace and use of AI and the digitisation of Norway,” she said.
“This strategic direction will free-up labour, create new jobs and contribute to solving serious societal challenges. We see the digitisation forum as being an important tool to enhance our work in this area.”
Overseeing digitisation
An offshoot of the NDS, the NDF’s profile was raised in October 2023, when Norway’s Labour-led government appointed a dedicated minister to oversee digitisation. This action was followed in January 2024 by the establishment of a Ministry of Digitization and Public Administration (MDPA).
Under the guidance of the MDPA, the NDF will both examine and evaluate specific AI and digitisation tools that hold the potential to enhance government efforts to manage aspects pertaining to principal segments of the national economy, including security, demographics, climate and the country’s ability to retain energy independence.
The NDF will host meetings with both invited experts and representatives from public and private organisations. The forum will function as a gathering point to share informed views and concerns relating to how advanced and evolving technologies can both stimulate and alter how business and industry may function in the future.
Moreover, the forum will investigate how AI and digitisation are likely to impact changes in consumer behaviour, and how citizens may interact with government agencies and the world around them.
Adjusting to change will become a staple feature in societies that are affected by the relentless arrival of new technologies, and advances in AI and digitisation, said Tung.
“We accept digitisation will need limits,” she added. “The new forum offers government, the world of business and other participants the unique opportunity to explore, discuss and identify solutions to major challenges that originate from technological advances, and that can be solved through the use of technology.”
Chaired by the MDPA, the NDF’s broad-ranging mission to guide government initiatives, and propel potential future legislative development, provides the Norwegian government with a useful new resource to boost policy development in the central areas of AI and digitisation.
Supporting new tech uses
A significant part of the NDF’s role will be to adopt supportive positions on new technology uses to ensure Norway doesn’t fall behind international competitor nations in exploiting the new opportunities presented by AI and digitisation.
For its part, the MDPA will use the NDF as a forum to promote, anchor and develop government policies on technology, and in particular proposals that help to accelerate the government’s green and digital transition initiatives.
The NDF will help facilitate solid and binding collaborations with important social actors, said Tung. “The work of the forum will further contribute to ensuring that the government’s digitisation policy is rooted in real needs in society. It will help deliver stronger coordination of the government’s digitisation work, and provide improved links to the work on administrative development, business-oriented digitisation and initiatives around achieving sustainability goals.”
The NDF’s establishment was welcomed by business and industry leaders, as well as pivotal interest groups such as IKT-Norge, Norway’s largest representative body for the ICT sector.
IKT-Norge, reflecting the general mood of corporate chiefs across the business and industry spectrum in Norway, has routinely criticised the government for failing to move faster in the policy and legislation formation areas to help structure and regulate the future development and advances in AI and digitisation.
Norway’s ICT industry has wanted the government to elevate dialogue and interactions with technology leaders to secure greater political clarity on policy direction, particularly in the case of AI, to define what limits may be placed on the technology in the future.
Government’s role
In terms of the government’s role in the technology space, business and citizens want AI to be used to deliver better services in their everyday lives, said Øyvind Husby, CEO of IKT-Norge.
“We must respond to the general optimism of society as a whole,” he said. “We first need three things to happen. We need more quality data in shareable cloud solutions. Second, we need better framework conditions and more government capital to increase innovation. And third, we need more political direction from the top if Norway is to become a European leader in AI and digitisation.”
Norway’s journey along the road of digital governance is being strongly influenced at present by a collaborative framework backed by the MDPA, the national Digitalisation Agency (DigDir), the Digitalisation Council and IT advisory group Skate.
New structures are being developed by this public-private alliance to drive digital initiatives across the public sector. The collaboration is working to deliver a more standardised approach to decision-making and the approval processes for digital investments. The goal is to produce more coherent strategies from government and the improved use of resources.
The need to innovate new and more powerful instruments in the management, harmonisation and coordination of AI and digitisation in Norway’s public sector has never been greater, said Guri Lande, DigDir’s director of digital strategy and interaction.
“If we are to succeed in exploiting the full potential of artificial intelligence, and solving important societal problems, we need to organise Norway’s public sector in a completely different way than is currently the case,” she said. “We must learn from the mistakes we have made in the area of digitisation in the past, and achieve a much clearer common approach to how we maximise the potential of AI as we move ahead.”