The Nordic Smart Government programme was started in 2016 and this report has covered the NSG&B 4.0 period in 2021–2024.
The vision of NSG&B is to create value by making real-time business data accessible and usable for innovation and growth across the region in an automatic, consent-based and secure manner and has focused on enabling SMEs to share data that is high quality in structured formats, accessible and automatic; shared and stored in a consent-based and secure manner.
The NSG&B has focused on four broad areas of cooperation:
Digital Business Documents & Product Information (SA-A)
Open Accounting & Simplified Reporting (SA-B)
Born Digital – the digital services for businesses of government services (SA-C)
Reliability and Data Quality (SA-D)
The purpose of the report has been to document the results and wider impact of the programme. This has been done by comparing the results of the programme to the application, by going through the vision and the roadmap milestones as well as scenarios for each of the four working groups to measure the programme’s deliverables and impact on these. The roadmap milestones are on a societal level, and the scenarios from 2021 for each of the four areas are quite broad as well.
Scenarios from the 2021 Implementation Plan
Thus, there are several external factors - such as technological developments, market developments and regulatory developments in EU countries and the five Nordic countries - that have had an impact on the relevance and progress of these roadmap milestones and the scenarios for the four working group areas in question.
In the appendix, there is included an outline of the scenarios for the programme that were set in 2021 – and in the NSG&B contribution to these by 2024. It shows that three out of nine scenarios can be considered to have been achieved, four are partly met dependent on how to measure them, and one has not been met. However, the progress that have been made is due to a combination of market and tech development, national efforts and a contribution from the NSG&B programme all pulling in the same direction. SMEs have more possibilities to automate most of their core administrative processes, e.g. eDocuments, many life cycle events and change service providers, however a common challenge is that implementation in the core business administration processes in SMEs remain to materialise in full scale societal level benefits.
When it comes to access to high quality data, SMEs indeed have better possibilities today than in 2021, for example with the new Nordic API that – if implemented in ERP-systems - can give SMEs direct access to trading partners info in their ERP-systems. However, when it comes to data exchange of these data with third parties and governments and doing this cross-border, the main challenge remains – which is a lack of structured business document data and high-value datasets like financial statements. This is particularly affecting cross-border interoperability due to the absence of a common baseline in the Nordics. Agencies and private sector actors need to promote interoperability across semantic, technical, administrative and legal aspects to achieve these scenarios, and this work is a long-term continuous cooperation work and cannot be done in one take. For instance, a scenario that is not met at this point is that SMEs can give access to public authorities to extract data for statistical surveys, analytics and, in a longer perspective, research, from their business systems, for example.
Main results of the programme
The main results of the NSG&B programme are in strengthening the cross-border interoperability of business data in the Nordic region in the following three main areas:
Possibilities for further automation of cross-border trade and reporting
Possible to automate sales & purchases with companies from other Nordic countries across different ERP-systems
Test ideas for automatic collection and exchange of green data in ERP-systems and other services – working across systems and across countries.
A method for automation of cross-border VAT reporting (ViDA).
Possibilities for cost-effective access to high quality structured data cross-border
Possible for easier “translation” of companies’ financial income statements across the Nordic region – a Nordic vocabulary
Possible for easier and more cost-effective access to public registry data of Nordic companies directly from inside ERP-systems and other services – a Nordic API and a possible contribution for a standard format for structured data on signatory rights for the EU Core Vocabulary
Possibilities for better access to national digital services/cross-border digital ID – eWallet
Exploring possibilities for a cross-border digital identification.
Contributing with structured data to the EU Digital Identity Wallet
It should be noted that to implement the results of the programme for end-users, it is necessary to involve the system providers further in the continued cooperation to apply the different areas of implementation created, such as the utilization of official registers through common Nordic APIs or the use of Peppol eDocuments as a basis for transaction-based VAT reporting or ESG reporting. With the participation of system providers, it would also be possible to engage large companies and their SME-clients as adopters. Afterward, the results and validated operational models could be disseminated to other accounting firms and SMEs.
The roadmap milestones
The eight roadmap milestones from the NSG&B Implementation Plan in 2021 were set up to monitor the success of the programme as the percentage of uptake of solutions and services, for example. However, in examining the progress on these milestones, it is clear that the progress on these milestones cannot be attributed to the programme alone, but it must be seen in a wider context of factors – tech, regulative, market development in each of the countries as well as on an EU and even global level.
In total, it is concluded that six out of eight milestones can be considered met at this point, since it is not clear at this point whether 80% of invoices in the Nordic region are eInvoices at this point.The roadmap milestone of the Nordic region being the most integrated in the world is beyond the scope for this report.
However, notably, the direction and trend of progress on these milestones are clear - all Nordic countries experience a high rise in the percentages of SMEs having a digital bookkeeping system and using eInvoices (roadmap milestones 2 and 6).
Moreover, it is concluded that the necessary technological possibilities are in place for SMEs to take into use, these being that there are possibilities available for sales and purchases to be handled digitally by default in compatible formats across the Nordic region; and that SMEs can freely choose to move their business data between business systems and are able to give access to their business data in ERP-systems to third parties using APIs or more simple user logins (roadmap milestone 3, 4, 5).
Regarding the broader milestones of saving SMEs EUR 500 million annually and the Nordic region being the most integrated in the world, we can point to estimations at this point. In Finland, the estimated benefits of a fully up and running real time economy ecosystem are approximately 6 billion euros annually (roughly 0.5% of the GDP). Estimation is based on external studies commissioned by the RTE program, interviews with public and private actors and experiments implemented in the RTE program. In Denmark, the cost-savings of digital bookkeeping and annual reporting is estimated to approximately 400 million euros annually. In 2026, there will be a more full picture of actual savings coming from the Danish Bookkeeping Act, that can be used to quantify this 2025 milestone. Moreover, it should be noted that, according to a study by the OECD (
Tax Administration 3.0), decreasing administrative work in SMEs increases business activity by 4%.
On a broader note, the NSG&B programme has strengthened the long-standing trend of developing the national digital solutions and infrastructure in a way that is interoperable and makes sense in relation to existing and upcoming initiatives in the other Nordic countries, in the EU and globally.