The Danish Ministry of Finance as Metagovernor — The Case of Public Sector Digitalization

Abstract

In 2001 an unprecedented governance form was initiated in the Danish public sector on a three-year experimental basis.² On the initiative of The Ministry of Finance, national, regional and local authorities embarked on a joint and co-financed Project eGovernment with the ambition to transform public sector organizations and their mutual relations through digitalization processes in and across them.

The chapter is based on two research projects: Jensen (2003) analysing the Danish Ministry of Finance and its governance strategies and Kahler (2003) focusing on the coordination capacity of Project eGovernment. Both projects build on interview material from a range of staff members from the ministry and its network partners. Interviewees are referred to by their organizational affiliation and hierarchial level, as the specific names are unimportant for the argument. All quotes from Kahler (2003), to which a page number is not attributed, stems from the raw material which is in an unpublished (and un-paginated) appendix. The last data were collected in the summer of 2003, and the findings in this chapter only concern the period until the winter 2002/2003.