Sweden’s new centre-right government has launched a €1bn infrastructure plan to drive digital transformation and capital investment in public administration, business and society.
The four-year plan focuses on accelerating the pace of digital transformation in key areas of government and public services, including education, transport, healthcare and national security.
Called the Digital Transformation Infrastructure Plan (DTIP), it builds on a technology-driven capital investment proposal made by the Moderate Party ahead of Sweden’s parliamentary elections in September last year.
The proposals advanced and deepened during post-election government formation talks led by moderates. The outcome of the negotiations created a three-party coalition led by moderates, including the Christian Democrats and liberal parties supported by the right-wing Sweden Democrats from the opposition bench.
When the underlying framework for the project is established Prime Minister Wolf KristersonIts new government assumed office on 18 October 2022. DTIP will be implemented in cooperation with the Agency for Digital Government (ADG/Myndigheten för Digital Förvaltning), the state agency responsible for coordinating and supporting the digitization of public administration in Sweden. ADG’s delegated mission empowers it to oversee all major digital infrastructure projects.
“Our digital priorities cover key areas of state administration and public services, including Sweden’s school system, which will be improved through the introduction of centrally corrected digital national tests under an accelerated programme. Our primary focus is to put in place a common national digital infrastructure to support our digital transformation journey,” Christerson said.
“Digital transformation faces complex challenges in Sweden. One of the challenges is finding the skills to make digital transformation a valuable and sustainable component of the economy.”
Åsa Zetterberg, TechSverige
Government’s commitment to accelerate transformation, Through DTIP, widely welcomed By the digital community of Sweden.
“Digital transformation faces complex challenges in Sweden. It would be good to have a government plan to help take us where we need to go as a more digitized society. A challenge for both the private and public sector is to find the skills to make the digital transition a valuable and sustainable component of the economy,” says Asa Zetterberg, director of TechSverige, a member organization representing 1,400 organizations with 100,000 employees. In the technology sector.
The current shortage of digital skills is considered the most significant obstacle to the growth of technology companies in Sweden. TechSverige estimates that companies will need to hire 70,000 to 100,000 people until 2024 to secure and advance their digitization plans.
However, a lack of digital skills risks “putting the brakes” on the ambitious growth plans of Sweden’s tech companies and other enterprises, Zetterberg said.
“Right now, companies in the technology sector are finding it difficult to hire all the skills they need. This hampers their development and opportunities to do more business,” he said.
to address Digital skills shortageTechSverige has launched its Addera tech campaign to attract more talent to the industry, including college graduates.
“Technology has become an increasingly important part of industrial society. It is a prerequisite for economic development, employment, climate adaptation and future prosperity. It is a broad space that we used to call IT and Telecom. Expanded industries now include computer games, healthtech, fintech and edtech companies. They all need more digital talent to thrive and reach their full potential,” Zetterberg said.
Making the increased funding available will enable ADG to better resource key projects. This includes initiatives to establish a common administrative digital infrastructure that makes information transfer more secure and efficient. In addition, ADG is developing a national framework for basic information.
A number of key digital transformation initiatives covered by DTIP fall under the Swedish government’s project ENA, which is managed by ADG and operates as a collaboration between 12 state agencies. These include the employment, company, court, tax, transport, statistics and e-health agencies, along with the insurance land surveyor’s office and the Swedish National Archives.
“We are working to achieve clear goals. Collaborative solution delivery offers enormous benefits to public administration actors. Everyone benefits from having access to a coherent general administration digital infrastructure that can be used to address basic general administration needs,” said Nystrom.
Research conducted by ADG suggests that a well-developed national digital infrastructure has the potential to generate efficiency gains and savings for public and private companies and organizations totaling SEK10bn (€890m) over 10 years.
“The most important thing about digital infrastructure is that the emphasis has shifted from working with analytics to developing national components that more enterprises and people can use. As different components are introduced and used, the infrastructure will also begin to generate cost savings and efficiency benefits. ,” Nystrom said.
The increase in capital funding from DTIP is intended to strengthen ADG’s capacity to accelerate high-value research work to analyze the best conditions under which Sweden’s municipalities and regions can participate and benefit from the proposed shared administrative digital infrastructure. One of the main objectives here is to fast-track the digitization of Sweden’s welfare system and services by 2026.
ADG launched a digital dashboard research tool in December 2022 to help enterprises and private individuals measure and analyze their engagement with public authorities and society at large. The free-to-use experimental beta version of the tool allows public authorities and private individuals to calculate and analyze their level of engagement with the “digital society”.
“From the feedback we get on the tool, we gain access to a large amount of data that allows us to build benefits within a wide range of references. This collected information can be useful for government authorities, educational institutions and media,” said Magdalena Norlin-Schönfeld, Head of Analytics at ADG.
The value-added nature of ADG’s digital analytics tools, which include an advanced metadata function, means users can access and use data as part of research projects or join commercial collaboration partnerships relevant to the development of public authorities’ digital businesses. .
