We have carried out the survey on the Nordic level in order to better understand the "as is situation" for the registration process in the different countries. The survey creates a foundation from which we can work in order to deliver value for our 2 million SMEs in the Nordic region. The survey has been carried out as a desk study among national business registries from all the Nordic countries, says Jan Otto Johansen, NSG&B, and Business Developer at Brønnøysundregistrene in Norway.
Jan Otto Johansen, NSG&B, and Business Developer at Brønnøysundregistrene in Norway.
Key findings
- All countries offer digital business registration by default through national gateways
- Forms are to a large extent internet-based, however Norway and Sweden are offering API’s to exchange data relevant for the registration
- National gateways are accessible with trusted national eID’s approved or issued by national authorities
- Paper-based registration is still accepted, however only very few businesses in the Nordics use paper forms
- The data from the registries is shared with companies, citizens and public authorities through APIs and look-up services
- The many similarities among the Nordic countries founds a strong basis for cross-border collaboration on business registration with huge potential for the many businesses operating across borders in the region.
One of today's challenges - digital identity across the Nordic borders
A key issue in order to smoothen the business registration processes across the Nordic countries is the ability to digitally identify and verify persons across the Nordic borders.
-Today we, at a Nordic level, lack approved cross-border digital IDs. And this in turn means, of course, that we make the digital process partly inaccessible across the Nordic borders and forces our Nordic entrepreneurs to manual processes, like sending PDFs, says Jan Fredrik Håvie, Project manager NS&&B, and continue:
- But that is, as we speak, an issue that is being addressed and dealt with by another Nordic digitalization programme initiated by Nordic Council of Ministers. The Nordic-Baltic eID project (NOBID) have set their focus on eID interoperability, which is a very valuable and important initiative that we following closely.
Jan Fredrik Håvie, Project Manager, Solution Area: Born Digital
All countries offer digital registration - but there is great potential for improvement
- It’s is very good though that all countries today offer the possibility to register businesses digitally. But there is undeniable potential for further development and activities from us public actors. For example, I see great value in the fact that we, in collaboration with actors in the private market, work together to be able to provide our SMEs with more advanced services like workflows pushing information between public agencies and the company, says Jan Otto Johansen, Business Developer, at Brønnøysundregistrene in Norway.
Contact
Would you like to know more about the study or discuss how we can use the power of digitalization to make the start-up and registration process easier for our Nordic companies, contact Jan Otto Johansen, who conducted the study together with his Nordic colleagues : joj@brreg.noj