In 2018 and 2019 PUBLIC ran the GovTech Program Denmark, a market engagement exercise to support the Danish Ministry for Industry, Business and Financial Affairs in engaging with the startup ecosystem. This involved defining key challenges for nine public bodies across the Danish public sector including: the Danish Safety Authority, the Ministry of Environment and Food, Aarhus Municipality, and the Agency for Digitisation. 

The programme consisted of four phases of engagement: i) challenge definition, ii) open calls to technology providers, iii) supplier selection and iv) ‘proof of concept’ market engagement with shortlisted companies. 

Examples of challenges included:

1. How can digital technology help to increase the penetration of electronic invoicing among Danish companies? (Danish Business Authority)
2. How can new technologies provide an automated solution to prepare material for the Minister prior to company visits and meetings? (Danish Ministry of Industry, Business and Financial Affairs)
3. How can new scanning technology/image recognition or other technologies digitize and automate the capturing and storing of product information when doing product inspections and integrate the information with existing databases from prior inspections? (Danish Safety Technology Authority)
4. How can new digital solutions help gather better, more structured, data from consumers about their complaints, and help triage and upgrade user experience in consumer complaint cases? (European Consumer Centre Denmark)