The Nordic cross-border cooperation programme on business data, Nordic Smart Government & Business, was started in 2016 by the five business registry authorities in the Nordic countries together with co-financier and partner, Nordic Innovation. The programme vision, the relation to the Nordic Prime Ministers’ vision and the NSG&B setup for the 2021-2024 period are outlined below.
NSG&B vision
The vision of the NSG&B programme 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.
Business data is the collective information related to a company and its operations. The transactions related to sales and purchases are at the core of business data. Business transactions involve several processes, including sending and receiving orders, invoices and receipts as well as bookkeeping, accounting and reporting to the government, for example. Increasingly over the years, these processes have shifted from being done manually to gradually being tech supported and moving towards automation. Thus, these processes have been improved by the private sector – from system vendors and other suppliers of various platforms and integrations, for example. Improvements are constantly being made, and now the market for affordable, integrated business systems have made it possible to automate all business processes.
While the SMEs can automate most of these processes by themselves, there are certain processes that rely on the digitalisation of government and trading partners.
The NSG&B vision points to the importance of enabling possibilities for SMEs to share data that is high quality – meaning it needs to be structural, real-time and usable for businesses, accessible and automatic; shared and stored in a consent-based and secure manner.
The core idea
Sales and purchases – trading – is at the core of what all businesses do. It is in these core processes where business data arise. When the programme was launched in 2016, trade consisted largely of a chain of non-standardised and manual processes that took place in digital silos like placing an order, sending an invoice, managing accounting and reporting to authorities.
The Nordic countries all have ambitious national initiatives in the field of digitalisation. However, perhaps due to each country having their own national starting point, the solutions are not by default setup for cross-border transactions. Thus, being a cooperation between the five Nordic countries, the NSG&B focus is on cross-border data sharing.
From the start of the programme, great potential was identified for the Nordic companies to realise as well as for the Nordic region if silos were mitigated and an interoperable digital infrastructure was established. An infrastructure that supported an automatic flow of structured and standardised data from electronic catalogues, orders, invoices and receipts, and enabled businesses to share data in real time with and through third-party providers of systems, integrations and other platforms.
To achieve interoperability of business data across Nordic countries – and beyond – there needed development on the interoperability in the following areas:
Trust services like e-identification, digital signatures, digital stamps and trusted time services
eDocuments like e-catalogues, e-orders, e-waybills, e-invoices, e-receipts, e-payments and e-salaries
eReporting, such as digital financial reporting, digital tax returns, digital customs declarations, digital statistical reporting, etc.
Technical infrastructure and services ensuring interoperability and making the exchange of the digital documents possible in a secure and traceable manner.
Cross-border interoperability in these areas can provide benefits such as:
Lowering the administrative and transaction costs as well as accelerating decision-making in daily business operations
Fostering the use of standardised and digital business documents as well as financial reporting;
Enhancing the quality of the data transferred and enabling the use of once-only
-principle;
Accelerating automation and streamlining of processes of all service providers - public and private – surrounding the daily business events and reporting of businesses.
Limiting the possibilities for committing fraud and tax evasion.
The programme’s milestones and activities have been designed to support the core idea of establishing an interoperable digital infrastructure for the Nordic region by working in these areas.
Supporting the vision of the Nordic Prime Ministers and Nordic Innovation
In 2019, the Nordic Prime Ministers adopted the common vision of making the Nordic region the most integrated and sustainable region in the world by 2030. The Nordic Council of Ministers has a range of cooperation committees in a broad range of areas. Among other things, the Nordic countries work together on business, energy and regional policies in order to promote continued positive growth in the region. The Nordic Council of Ministers for Sustainable Growth consists of ministers responsible for business, energy and regional policy. Nordic Innovation is an institution under the Nordic Council of Ministers in this area, and it supports the Nordic Prime Ministers’ vision and focus on making the Nordics a pioneering region for sustainable growth by promoting entrepreneurship, innovation and competitiveness.
The NSG&B programme has been funded by Nordic Innovation and has been one of many programmes to support this vision. This vision of the Nordic region being the most integrated region in the world by 2030 is one of eight roadmap milestones for the programme, and the NSG&B contribution to this vision is outlined in the roadmap chapter and the appendix for this roadmap milestone number 8. The NSG&B programme has contributed to this by building the framework for an interoperable digital infrastructure between businesses and governments in order to create value for the businesses in the Nordic region.
About the NSG&B programme 2021-2024
The NSG&B programme is funded by the government agencies and by Nordic Innovation, and the business registries of each country are the contracting parties. The Nordic Smart Government programme was started in 2016 by the five business registry authorities in the Nordic countries. In the past 8 years, the programme has evolved through different phases wherein more government agencies and external stakeholders have been involved in the programme.
Implementation phase – deliver value to Nordic SMEs
The first part of the programme starting in 2016 was about identifying shared interests, and the cooperation was focused in one working group. From 2021, in this end phase of the programme, four working groups involving a total of 21 different government agencies have been able to deliver results that companies can benefit from directly as well as the groundwork for further long-term cooperation improving the Nordic business environment. This report will cover the NSG&B 4.0 period of 2021-2024.
NSG&B setup 2021–2024
The overall framework for the work is outlined in the Roadmap 2021-2024 and the Implementation Plan 2021-2024.
Roadmap 2021–2024
The final report from NSG 3.0 consists of eight overall milestones and a description of the six solution areas of NSG&B 3.0 (now, four solution areas) and an appendix of deliverables from NSG&B 3.0. The final report for NSG 3.0 was then used as a roadmap for the following project period of 2021-2024. The NSG 3.0 report was the basis for the application for NSG&B 4.0.
Implementation plan 2021–2024
The NSG&B 4.0 application consisted of an introduction with an outline of the state of play, an overview of capabilities and milestones, expected deliverables and detailed KPIs of each solution area, and setup for the governance of the project including budgets. In this way, the application was a proposal for how to implement the Roadmap, and after its approval by Nordic Innovation, it was named Implementation Plan 2021–2024.
Organisation
The organisational setup has been set up to facilitate a collaboration that is cross-border, cross-institutional, cross public-private sector as well as interdisciplinary. The organisation of the NSG&B 4.0 has been set up based on experiences from the previous NSG programmes 1.0-3.0.