Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am very pleased to welcome you to Oslo, to the Ministry of Labour and Government Administration. It is very satisfying to see that so many of you took time off your busy schedules in order to be able to attend this meeting, which we hope will contribute to further development of this important area within public administration.

Let me introduce you to the role and tasks of our Ministry, with special emphasis on our efforts within information technology application within central government and the development of an electronic government that will be able to offer services on a "24/7" basis, in an efficient way, to all citizens in our geographically challenging country.

Our Ministry, among its several responsibilities, has the role of policy co-ordinator in the field of public sector management, development of strategies for government organisation and government services and IT-development across sectors and agencies.

The measures to attain these goals will be coordinated within the umbrella of up-coming "Renewal Program" for public sector in Norway.

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The main goals of this program are:

• A public administration suited to society’s needs
• A public administration fulfilling citizens’ expectations and needs
• An efficient public administration
• A co-ordinated public administration
• Less administration, better service delivery
• Less central micro-management, greater freedom for local decision making.

The main measures the program may encompass are as follows:

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• Increased de-centralisation and deregulation
• Greater freedom for municipalities, less centrally managed budgeting
• Re-allocation of resources from administrative tasks to service delivery
• Outsourcing of non-governmental functions
• New management methods, education and training of managers.

Now let me say a few words about our strategies for cross-sectoral IT-development and their relation to the overall goal of renewal of public sector.

In early 1999, a 3-year action plan on electronic government had been adopted and thus a fundament was laid for current activities and policy development in this field.

The action plan comprises eight priority areas which can be looked upon as building blocks of electronic government. I will not go into detail, but give you a quick overview picture where I think you will recognise many of the elements.

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• The priority areas are as follows:
• 1.Year 2000 security
• 2.Infrastructure
• 3.IT security
• 4.Information services on the Internet
• 5.Electronic administrative procedures
• 6.Electronic data interchange
• 7.Electronic commerce for public procurement
• 8. IT management and organisation.

Let me highlight a few of the areas, those in particular that relate to theme of this meeting.

• Infrastructure development shall result in an interoperable networking environment and generic services of common interest spanning all levels of public administration throughout the country in a cost effective manner.
• IT-security in government involves establishing necessary policies and remedies to maintain confidence and trust in public administration and its robustness.
• Information services on the Internet and Elecronic administrative procedures are both prerequisites for development of interactive electronic service delivery to the citizens, based on the Internet.

In order to realise a "24/7" government services, some basic infrastructural elements must be in place. To put you into the picture, let me show you some crude, but relevant indicators on how Norwegian central government administration stands in relation to the development of information society.

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The slide shows that many of the basic prerequisites for electronic government in the form of basic infrastructure and applications are largely in place in central government administration, with local government, the private sector and the wider public following rapidly behind.

There still are, of course, some major strategic issues to be handled on the infrastructure side - like exploring new technologies, introducing value added services like common catalogue services, improving interoperability, and increasing security levels so that the networks can be used for more purposes than today.

As indicated initally, most central government entities have established their own website. How they use the net varies a lot, however.

We may categorise the level of service delivery via the Internet into three main levels. The basic level is to publish static information only. At the next level, two-way electronic communication, like e-mail or ordering of forms and/or further information, is provided. At the most advanced level the Internet is also used for service delivery and formal transactions.

We estimate that about 40% of agencies have reached the second level, with 10% at the first level only. A few agencies have introduced services on the third level. 300.000 Norwegians submitted their tax returns via the Internet this year, to give one example.

The challenge now is to stimulate all agencies to reach the third level as quickly and in an as efficient manner as possible, in order to provide reliable electronic services to the public and thus fulfill the goals of electronic government.

At the horizontal level, an issue of major and increasing concern is to ensure that electronic services are delivered in an integrated and coherent way across agency and sector boundaries. Furthermore, it is important to co-ordinate this development with other measures taken in order to provide better public services, like the "single window to citizens" initiative, where we had a number of joined-up offices operating across the country on a pilot basis. This initiative will now be followed up with the view to establishing permanent solutions. Electronic services will be an integrated part of such new offer to the citizens.

Finally, reliable and secure solutions for digital signatures and protection of electronic documents and messages against fraud, are an important prerequisite for introduction of electronic government and electronic service delivery. I hope that you will arrive at some relevant conclusions in that respect during your deliberations here in Oslo.

On behalf of our government I wish you success in your important work in this area.

Thank you.