Foreword
The OECD Digital Government Review of Sweden assesses the achievements, opportunities and challenges in developing a data-driven public sector in Sweden. This Review was prepared at the request of the Swedish Ministry of Finance, and benefited from the strong support of the Swedish Minister of Public Administration.
The Review presents the government’s efforts to enable the right institutional, organisational and cultural environment to maximise the value of data as a tool to address policy challenges and improve public service delivery. It identifies opportunities and provides advice to the Swedish government on how to move from political ambition and policy goals to coherent policy implementation and impact.
The Review contributes to – and benefits from – the OECD Going Digital project, an OECD-wide initiative assessing the impact of the digital revolution across policy areas.
Sweden participates actively in OECD fora such as the OECD Working Party of Senior Digital Government Officials (E-Leaders) and the OECD Expert Group on Open Government Data. Sweden stands out as one of the leading countries in e-government and citizens’ connectivity. As a result of long-standing efforts to enhance public sector productivity and public service delivery through digitalisation, today Swedish citizens benefit from integrated and multi-channel public services. This helps facilitate and streamline government-citizen interactions.
Looking forward, and to build on the progress achieved, the Review recommends that Sweden should invest more in digital openness and user engagement as tools for better policy making, public service delivery and well-being. It also identifies the need to fine-tune institutional, policy and regulatory arrangements for digital government, data governance and open government data. A stronger governance model should also include enhanced enforcement capacity of the co-ordinating body (the Agency for Digital Government), and strengthened co-ordination and collaboration across actors to facilitate coherent policy implementation.
A data-driven public sector, openness, collaboration and co-ordination are core elements of the OECD Recommendation of the Council on Digital Government Strategies adopted by the OECD Council in 2014. Sweden’s well-established culture of public sector transparency is an important strength. It should also be an essential structuring element in building an institutional framework that facilitates the use of data as an asset for business and social innovation. In addition, the public sector’s consensus-based culture should facilitate the use of data as a platform for collaboration among different actors. But for that purpose, collective knowledge needs to be better crowdsourced, drawing on collaboration with communities of practice within and outside the public sector.