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EXCLUSIVE – Digital First Initiative – Sweden’s Digital Transformation Journey

EXCLUSIVE - Digital First Initiative - Sweden's Digital Transformation Journey

Recently I interviewed Jorgen Sandstrom, Head of Section, Digitisation Division of the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions in Sweden. He discussed the implementation of Digital First initiative by local authorities in Sweden to transform the delivery of social services.

What are your priorities for digitisation? And how are you going about achieving them?

Our organisation works with everything from making agreements with government and various associations, as well as launching political discussion on how digitisation can transform our society. The bigger discussions are divided on topics like health care, housing, smart cities among others. Our concentration is on technical issues with standardisation on farming, architecture and solutions for our social welfare system.

We help our stakeholders to improve their digitisation programs.  This is done by helping them focus on evaluating each project independently. We concentrate on self-evaluation tools for our schools.  Assisting them in understanding the importance of information security and the security risks that face them.  This is an on-going endeavour which needs constant upgrading.   

Your division seems to be focusing on diverse areas. How do you identify which ones to roll out?

With over 300 experts in areas such as energy conservation, health care, housing and smart cities we need to work smart than harder. This is done by working in co-operation in many diverse areas of focus, using working groups, study groups and pilots. Issues are prioritised based on where we receive funding. The tricky part is providing the benefits of change, looking towards the future and focusing on results.

We work closely with our Central Governed and European Union, spending time and money explaining the benefits of digitisation in our health care system and betterment of society, thus attracting more funds.

Are you seeing any chance in approach towards the projects from the various beneficiaries? 

Yes, more of the ideas come from the members within these organisations. In the past organisations drove change, today we are seeing the members, or users having a far greater level of input. In our explanations of the benefits of digitisation, we explain that it is more than just the technology. We need to understand that it is more in how we think and the end to end experience. Having the customer drive the outcomes leads to better results all around.

Tough part – Projects and evaluation – How?

We can always improve the way we measure our success, and that is always in our minds. We successfully delivery on most of our projects as this is often driven by the beneficiaries have such convictions in the outcomes. Unlike most test projects that fail, we have a high level of success.

Benefit realisation is the challenge to all projects. There are a lot of statistics collected by the European Union and our own national statistics office. But measuring the success in terms of money is difficult, especially in health care or any other project delivered for the society unlike production facilities. The reason being those benefits can sometime take a considerable time to show.

In Europe, every house, building and person is somewhere within a local authority which has some level of responsibility to the individual. In countries like in Sweden, we take a lot of responsibilities, in other countries like France or Greece that level of responsibility has grown to include the new immigrants. This has a tendency to shift the goal posts, changing our situation.

How much is your Data open for the public?

We provide access via API’s to about two thousand indicators in different areas. Municipalities are able to published data online. That data provides information on measures in health care, quality of education in schools and also compare schools. Some data can’t be published in its current forms like traffic patterns as they are gathered in many different ways. We are working on standardising these so we can publish this too.

What would your divisions focus for the next three years?

We are working a lot towards’ Digital First. To do this transformation, we are leveraging information from all our various datasets.  This is one important step for getting to Digital First. We also would like to see that if we can deliver all public services topped with analogue services. 

Unlike other countries, Sweden local authorities are investing a lot on fibre infrastructure. Providing companies greater abilities in the delivery of their services. This shows how local authorities help and extending telecommunication services for companies and individuals. 

Jorgen will be at Singapore OpenGov Leadership Forum on the 12th of May at the Grand Hyatt personally sharing more on this.

PARTNER

Qlik’s vision is a data-literate world, where everyone can use data and analytics to improve decision-making and solve their most challenging problems. A private company, Qlik offers real-time data integration and analytics solutions, powered by Qlik Cloud, to close the gaps between data, insights and action. By transforming data into Active Intelligence, businesses can drive better decisions, improve revenue and profitability, and optimize customer relationships. Qlik serves more than 38,000 active customers in over 100 countries.

PARTNER

CTC Global Singapore, a premier end-to-end IT solutions provider, is a fully owned subsidiary of ITOCHU Techno-Solutions Corporation (CTC) and ITOCHU Corporation.

Since 1972, CTC has established itself as one of the country’s top IT solutions providers. With 50 years of experience, headed by an experienced management team and staffed by over 200 qualified IT professionals, we support organizations with integrated IT solutions expertise in Autonomous IT, Cyber Security, Digital Transformation, Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure, Workplace Modernization and Professional Services.

Well-known for our strengths in system integration and consultation, CTC Global proves to be the preferred IT outsourcing destination for organizations all over Singapore today.

PARTNER

Planview has one mission: to build the future of connected work. Our solutions enable organizations to connect the business from ideas to impact, empowering companies to accelerate the achievement of what matters most. Planview’s full spectrum of Portfolio Management and Work Management solutions creates an organizational focus on the strategic outcomes that matter and empowers teams to deliver their best work, no matter how they work. The comprehensive Planview platform and enterprise success model enables customers to deliver innovative, competitive products, services, and customer experiences. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, with locations around the world, Planview has more than 1,300 employees supporting 4,500 customers and 2.6 million users worldwide. For more information, visit www.planview.com.

SUPPORTING ORGANISATION

SIRIM is a premier industrial research and technology organisation in Malaysia, wholly-owned by the Minister​ of Finance Incorporated. With over forty years of experience and expertise, SIRIM is mandated as the machinery for research and technology development, and the national champion of quality. SIRIM has always played a major role in the development of the country’s private sector. By tapping into our expertise and knowledge base, we focus on developing new technologies and improvements in the manufacturing, technology and services sectors. We nurture Small Medium Enterprises (SME) growth with solutions for technology penetration and upgrading, making it an ideal technology partner for SMEs.

PARTNER

HashiCorp provides infrastructure automation software for multi-cloud environments, enabling enterprises to unlock a common cloud operating model to provision, secure, connect, and run any application on any infrastructure. HashiCorp tools allow organizations to deliver applications faster by helping enterprises transition from manual processes and ITIL practices to self-service automation and DevOps practices. 

PARTNER

IBM is a leading global hybrid cloud and AI, and business services provider. We help clients in more than 175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline business processes, reduce costs and gain the competitive edge in their industries. Nearly 3,000 government and corporate entities in critical infrastructure areas such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM’s hybrid cloud platform and Red Hat OpenShift to affect their digital transformations quickly, efficiently and securely. IBM’s breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions and business services deliver open and flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM’s legendary commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity and service.

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