Briefing note on the Norwegian eGovernment system (called Altinn)

The impetus for the Altinn website came from 2003, when the then Norwegian

government decided to establish a web portal for corporations to do their

statutory reporting.

All businesses have to report regularly (mostly annually) to a wide range of

State agencies. Three of the largest State agencies – the Norwegian Tax

Administration, Statistics Norway and the Brønnøysund Register Centre

(equivalent of our CRO) piloted the project that was eventually to become

Altinn.

The original idea was a common web portal for public reporting by businesses,

but over the years since the portal was launched in 2003, it has expanded

dramatically.

Now, it also provides other electronic services to the citizen such as the opportunity to receive messages from the public authorities as well as other services. The most used service in Altinn as of today is the opportunity private citizens have to hand in their tax-return electronically.

In the future, it is hoped to expand the service to cover every citizen interaction with the State. To cover all of the life events we need to have contact with State concerning.

The possibilities for efficiencies and savings here are multiple.

By 2009 more than 440,000 businesses chose to do their statutory reporting through Altinn, and at that time over 700 different public forms were available in the web portal.

By January 2011 there were 29 public agencies, three municipalities and one county municipality signed up as service providers in Altinn.

BY 2012 –

86% of all Norweigian business used Altinn.

More than 80 million forms that would have otherwise been printed were made unnessecary.

17% less hours were spent on administration

The total hours spent on administration by Norwegian businesses droped from 6,000 to just under 3,000 in roughly ten years.

The total money saved was US$7 billion

The closest example we have in Ireland is the Revenue On-Line system, which

works reasonably well.

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