| Goal | Evaluation of the eInnsyn publishing service. |
| Responsible for the commitment | The Ministry of Digitalisation and Public Governance (DFD) in cooperation with the Ministry of Justice and Public Security (JD) and the Ministry of Culture and Equality (KUD). |
| Stakeholders | Authorities: All entities that deliver or can deliver content (mail journals and links to full-text documents) to the publishing service. Civil society: General public, as well as press and media organizations such as the Norwegian Press Association, the Association of Norwegian Editors, and the Norwegian Union of Journalists. Other relevant interest organizations: The Norwegian Bar Association, Federation of Norwegian Professional Associations, Amnesty International, the Norwegian Directorate of Health, the Norwegian Society of Records Managers and Archivists, and Publish What You Pay Norway. Others (parliament, private sector, etc.) Norwegian Association of Local and Regional Authorities (KS), suppliers of other solutions for publishing public records. |
| Time period (to – from) | 2023 – 2026 |
| What is the cause of the problem? | · The use of eInnsyn is authorised in the Freedom of Information Regulations, but this only applies to the central government sector. · The municipal sector is only covered by the provision in Section 7. · It can be very costly for the municipal sector to utilise eInnsyn as a publishing solution. · The solution has been exposed to security incidents on several occasions, and this may give rise to assessments of whether the service should be better protected against such incidents. |
eInnsyn is a publicly available online publishing service for public agencies that are subject to the Freedom of Information Act. The service involves the central government, as well as some county authority and municipal entities, publish mail journals and meeting and committee data on eInnsyn.
All citizens, the press and media organisations can search the records anonymously and free of charge and demand access to documents that have not been published. The service is unique in a global context.
When it was decided to establish eInnsyn as a replacement for the Public Electronic Mail Journal (OEP), four main goals were set for the project:
- Improve security in OEP.
- Good and rational solutions to ensure data protection.
- Streamline work processes in public administration.
- Make public documents more easily accessible to the public.
The eInnsyn publishing service should be evaluated based on the goal of the service. Evaluate the service to find out whether the goals set for the publishing service have been achieved and whether the service is being run and developed in an appropriate manner, including whether the security of the publishing service is adequately safeguarded. It should be evaluated whether the service is sufficiently user-friendly so that ordinary citizens without additional knowledge about the use of search parameters can find the information.
An external evaluation must, among other things, gather feedback and input from representatives from public administration, civil society and the media. This will contribute to the service continuing to be a good, secure and cost-effective tool for providing access to public documents.
An evaluated service will give citizens, the media and the press greater confidence that the service will provide the best possible overview of public documents for which access can be requested.
What has been done so far to solve the problem?
- OEP/eInnsyn has received considerable international attention and positive publicity as the first of its kind but has never been externally evaluated against its objectives.
Expected outcome
Receive a report from the evaluation that can help:
- Contribute to the service continuing to be a good, secure and cost-effective tool for providing access to public documents.
- Increase confidence that public administration is managing and further developing the best possible solution.
- Give citizens, the media and the press greater confidence that the service will provide the best possible overview of public documents for which access can be requested.
- Improve the service.
- Be one of several knowledge bases for a new strategy for eInnsyn.