The current economic situation in Europe asking for more mobile citizens and businesses. And not least, better, more efficient and cost effective public services. The Government is concerned that Europe is developing a digital internal market, that we remove bottlenecks in the public that prevents businesses and develop electronic services across national borders in Europe, accorging to Regjeringen.
The European integration is not only a political vision. It is largely a reality.
600 000 people live today in an EU country and work in another. 350 000 people marry across national borders within the EU. 180 000 are studying in another EU country than the country. The interaction between the administrations in the European countries does not reflect this.
The EU currently has five large-scale pilots under development as part of a framework for competitiveness and innovation (CIP) in the ICT field. Norway participates actively in this work. Among other things, leads Difi one of the most outstanding pilots, peppol (Pan-European Public Procurement Online).
Peppol aims to ensure that public procurement should be electronic and operate across national borders in Europe. Peppol an important role in efforts to create a digital single market in Europe. This will in Norway we also enjoy. An implementation of the European countries will facilitate access to European markets for Norwegian suppliers.
Other pilots are working on how the European registry devices (such as the Brønnøysund / Altinn) can offer their services across borders, how each country's eID solutions can be used against other countries' e-government services and how patient information and prescriptions can be exchanged. Privacy is of course an integral part of this work.
The EU has invested around 100 million euros in ICT cooperation, and a further 100 million are invested by the participating member countries and organizations.
