e-Access and Expansion (NO0056)

E-access and potential expansion of e-access in the municipal sector The commitment has been included in supplementary letter of award no. 5, 2018 for Difi. No time limit has been defined for the work. Reporting will follow the ordinary reporting routines for tasks assigned in a letter of award. Responsible body Agency for Public Management and eGovernment (Difi) The Ministry of Local Government and Modernisation is requesting Difi to conduct a survey of the potential for expansion of the e-access solution in the municipal sector. Many municipalities already use online solutions for publication of their electronic journals. The survey should be able to provide an overview of which municipalities currently have alternative solutions for publication and access and those which do not have any such solutions at all. The survey should be able to comment on the prerequisites of the municipalities to implement the common solution and the administrative and economic consequences of such use, both for the owners of the solution and for the individual municipalities. What problem for the general public is the commitment aimed to solve? We have no overview of how the right of access is safeguarded in the municipal sector. There is no re-quirement either for the publication of public journals in the municipal sector. Difi and the City of Oslo have, through the new access solution, e-access, made provisions so that the municipalities who would like to facilitate access can adopt the solution if they wish. Many municipalities have their own online solutions for the publication of electronic journals. Some of them do not have any digital access solutions at all. We do not currently know the number of municipalities that fall into each category. We do not know what administrative processing and archiving system is being used. Knowledge of this would provide a better basis for clarifying the prerequisites for municipalities that do not have access solutions being able to adopt e-access. 22 What is the commitment? Survey the potential for expansion of the e-access solution in the municipal sector. How will the commitment contribute to solving the problem? The survey results will not contribute to solving the problem, but they will give the Ministry a better basis for determining how expansion of e-access in the municipal sector should be organised, with a view to increasing the number of municipalities that have access solutions. How is this commitment relevant to the OGP’s fundamental values? The commitment can contribute to improving the availability of public documents. Additional information Currently, the only binding regulations governing the publication of public journals on the Internet (i.e. e-access) are Section 6, first paragraph of the Free-dom of Information Regulations, which are aimed at a number of central government entities. This is limited by Section 6, third paragraph of the Freedom of Information Regulations, which lists specific exemptions from such publication. There are no legal grounds/authority to instruct municipal entities to publish a public journal on the Internet. Surveying the need for e-access in the municipalities is necessary. Cost assessments must be made before the e-access solution is adopted by the municipalities. A business model must be prepared for how the costs will be shared for the implementation and use of e-access in the municipalities. Milestones Start date End date Survey 2019 2019 Contact information Person responsible from the implementing body Ministry of Local Government and Modernisation/ ITPOL/Live Heltberg Entity Difi E-mail/Telephone Other public participants Collaborative civil society organisations, cross-sectoral working groups, etc. Organisations of the press

3. E-access and potential expansion of e-access in the municipal sector

Main Objective

"The Ministry of Local Government and Modernisation is requesting Difi to conduct a survey of the potential for expansion of the e-access solution in the municipal sector. Many municipalities already use online solutions for publication of their electronic journals. The survey should be able to provide an overview of which municipalities currently have alternative solutions for publication and access and those which do not have any such solutions at all. The survey should be able to comment on the prerequisites of the municipalities to implement the common solution and the administrative and economic consequences of such use, both for the owners of the solution and for the individual municipalities.

Survey the potential for expansion of the e-access solution in the municipal sector.

The survey results will not contribute to solving the problem, but they will give the Ministry a better basis for determining how expansion of e-access in the municipal sector should be organised, with a view to increasing the number of municipalities that have access solutions."

Milestones

• Survey (2019)

Editorial Note: For the complete text of this commitment, please see Norway's action plan at https://www.regjeringen.no/en/dokumenter/norges-handlingsplan-4---open-government-partnership-ogp/id2638814/

Commitment Analysis
Under Commitment 2 from Norway's third action plan (2016-2018), the Norwegian Digitalisation Agency launched the eInnsyn platform for electronic public records. eInnsyn improved the availability of electronic journaling as compared to the previous public electronic records system. [12] However, this platform is not currently used by municipalities (except for Oslo). With the eInnsyn platform already in place, this commitment in the current action plan seeks to gather knowledge on its potential usage for municipalities. Currently, the quality and availability of archived documents in municipalities varies significantly, and municipal authorities lack systematic information on archiving practices. [13] According to the regulations following the Freedom of Information Act, it is not mandatory for municipalities to publish journals online. [14] For state public authorities, eInnsyn is free to use, whereas municipalities will have to pay Norwegian Digitalisation Agency for the service provided.

For this commitment, Norwegian Digitalisation Agency will conduct a survey of Norwegian municipalities to analyse how they currently publish their records. The Ministry of Local Government and Modernisation (KMD) will then use the survey's results to determine how best to expand e-access in the municipal sector, with the aim of increasing the number of municipalities that have access solutions. While the survey itself will not directly lead to greater public access to government-held information, its findings could result in more Norwegian municipalities providing electronic access to their records. Therefore, the commitment is relevant to the OGP value of access to information.

The planned survey could provide KMD with better understanding of how it may improve archiving practices in Norwegian municipalities. However, the potential impact of this commitment is minor, as the survey would only serve as an internal diagnostic tool for the government. The Association of Norwegian Editors, Norwegian Press Association, and Norwegian Union of Journalists have previously voiced their concern that it should be mandatory for municipalities to publish their journals. This may be done by changing the regulations related to the Freedom of Information Act, mainly by adding regions and municipalities as public authorities obliged to publish their records. [15]

The IRM recommends the government initiate a legal review to strengthen and harmonise record-keeping and archiving requirements for municipalities and state public authorities. Similar to Commitment 1 (which pertained to archiving practices among national-level government bodies), the IRM also recommends developing guidelines for Norwegian municipalities on maintaining good archiving practices during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Commitment 3. E-access and potential expansion of e-access in the municipal sector/ improve the e-access system “elnnsyn” to make the public administration more open and accessible to the public

· Verifiable: Yes

· Relevant: Access to information

· Potential impact: Minor

· Completion: Limited

· Did it open government? Marginal

Context and Objectives

This commitment seeks to promote and expand the use of the “eInnsyn” platform [9] in municipalities. The commitment aimed to gather knowledge through a dedicated survey on the use of the “eInnsyn” platform by municipalities. [10] DigDir launched “eInnsyn” under Norway’s third action plan (2016–2018), [11] and it is an online platform for publication of electronic records and journals of governmental authorities. Under the regulatory framework that the Freedom of Information Act provides, [12] state public authorities are obliged to publish their records, but municipalities are not. Additionally, state authorities can use the “eInnsyn” system at no cost, whereas municipalities must pay. At the time of writing of the IRM Design Report (2020), only Oslo was using “eInnsyn” to publish its journals online; the approach to archiving amongst municipalities was fragmented. [13] When the survey was complete, the amended action plan included follow-up activities aimed at expanding the platform’s use amongst municipal and county authorities, documenting the work of political bodies at the municipal and county levels, ensuring transparency into the work of the “eInnsyn” management committee, and increasing the proportion of full-text documents published. The amended commitment was more targeted and ambitious and included well-defined milestones, with a target for system adoption by the municipalities, although the target dates went beyond the duration of the action plan (lasting in some cases until 2024). This development led to the potential impact of the commitment increasing from minor to major.

Did It Open Government? Marginal

At the end of the action plan implementation period, this commitment had yielded marginal early results.

An interviewed representative of DigDir [14] explained that although there has been some progress and success in expanding the system’s use to municipalities beyond Oslo (seven municipalities [15] and three counties [16] currently use the system), it has been slower than initially hoped. The main challenges and obstacles relate to the regulatory framework and lack of funding—namely, as outlined earlier, that municipalities and counties are expected to pay to access the system. Other unexpected regulatory and bureaucratic issues related to the inclusion of value-added tax on invoices for these services have slowed the adoption process. The interviewee, however, confirmed that several municipalities had expressed interest in using the system. [17] An interviewed representative of the OGP Council also praised the “eInnsyn” system, although he confirmed that the adoption targets in the municipal sector had not been achieved because of the costs for municipalities to connect to this solution. [18] The interviewee further confirmed that discussions were held in the context of the Freedom of Speech Commission [19] to broaden the use of the solution mandatorily to the municipal sector, although no formal decision had yet been taken. [20] Because the adoption process was slow, the focus of the initiative was redirected to the publication of full-text documents (Milestone 4), and the number of implementing agencies has grown from three in 2018 to eleven at the time of writing of this report. [21] According to the DigDir representative, the publication of documents in full text provides citizens with better access to information and increased transparency because documents can be searched for easily in the system without the need to submit a Freedom of Information request. Documents available in the “eInnsyn” system include correspondence, meeting agendas and minutes, and budget and spending information. Challenges in implementation have included a degree of resistance to publication from state agencies based on fear of breaches to data protection regulations. The current share of full-text documents on the portal remains relatively low (1,414,763 out of 54,277,472 [2.6%]). [22] The DigDir representatives explained that inclusion in the OGP action plan adds value by providing an additional layer of accountability to the activity’s realisation. [23]

In light of these considerations, this commitment is considered to have reached limited completion because current regulatory challenges have prevented its realisation. Early results for providing public access to information about the local level so far have been marginal, with the achievements to date representing steps towards expanding the use of the “eInnsyn” system in the municipal sector.

Looking Ahead

The IRM recommends that the DigDir to continue the initiative to ensure that the public can easily access and use the information at the local level. It should collaborate with the Ministry of Justice and Public Security on how to solve key regulatory challenges preventing further adoption as well as address resistance from state agencies to publication of documents in full-text format based on data-protection concerns. The latter could be achieved, for example, through targeted awareness campaigns. Regular interaction and cooperation with civil society to identify, for example, priority documents for publication could also be useful.