The problem

For more than twenty years, Danish citizens have enjoyed access to digital mail. For about as long, the concept behind the mailbox remained the same, and updates were mostly minor.

Last year, however, the Danes were introduced to mit.dk, a digital mailbox that encourages recipients to act on information and interact with the sender.

»The core idea behind mit.dk was to create a next-generation mailbox. In the old world of digital mail, if you received a document from a company or a branch of the public sector, there would be no easy way to act on it«, Signe Jarlov, partner in Netcompany, says.

»For instance, if you received a fine, say a speeding or parking ticket, you had to first log in to one digital mailbox to read the fine, and then go somewhere else to act on that information, all the while remembering a multi-digit payline. With mit.dk, you will soon be able to instantly pay the speeding ticket or contact the issuer in one place, which removes a lot of clutter and saves a lot of time«.

The solution

The new digital mailbox, which opened in 2022, allows for many new feature capabilities besides paying for speeding tickets. With mit.dk, you can book doctor’s or dentist’s appointments, pay electricity bills, and chat with customer advisors. In addition, mit.dk makes it easier for citizens to access and follow their own course of treatment in the health care system, share documents with hospitals or general practitioners, manage finances, inform workplaces, unions, insurance companies and other bodies about a change of address, accept or decline a loan or leasing offer, interact with the public sector, and for the public sector and companies to reach with citizens.

With a single swipe of consent, citizens can allow the digital platform to store everything from bank and payment details to sensitive personal information, alleviating the need to fill out forms repeatedly. With just one click, the platform shares the necessary information with trusted third parties, streamlining the digital journey.

»Instead of having to enter your address and payment methods every single time, you just click “accept”, and the platform then provides whatever information is needed in a safe way«, Signe Jarlov says.

»If you’re in an electronics shop, and you want to pay for a new TV in installments, instead of gathering all your personal information, your bank details, and your rating, you just press one button on your phone and grant the store instant access to all the information it needs from you. It creates a flow that’s reminiscent of Apple Pay, and it saves everyone involved a lot of time and hassle«.

Results

Creating the platform was anything but easy. To work, it has to store sensitive personal information securely and communicate with various dated IT systems of collaborators in the public and private sectors.

»If the IT systems of our collaborators are outdated, no amount of work on our side can fix the issues. That’s often a challenge when working in govtech, and it was a big one with a project as crucial as this«, Signe Jarlov says.

Since mit.dk was successfully implemented in 2022, however, signups have increased from both citizens and companies.  As of August 2023, over 3 million Danish citizens and several hundred businesses use the platform, and initial results are positive.

»We’ve heard from several companies that they’re experiencing positive results. The insurance company PensionDanmark have informed us they have cut their spending on digital mail by 80% after implementing the solution. In addition, mit.dk makes it easier for citizens to stay in touch with companies and the public sector, and to act on important digital mail, and that was our goal from the beginning«, Signe Jarlov says.