21st January 2022
21st January 2022
Digital mailbox - implementation plan
Last year, the Government of Iceland approved a law on a digital mailbox. The digital mailbox would be available for all individuals and companies through the Governments service portal Ísland.is.
An implementation plan has been greatied for institutions aiming to enable individuals and companies to access all major government data in the mailbox by 2025. The objective of the Digital Mailbox Act is to improve public services, increase transparency in handling cases and ensure a secure way to communicate data to individuals and businesses. The introduction of this Act will also have a positive impact on the environment, as digital communications do not require paper usage or travel between locations.
Some parties have already begun publishing data in the mailbox and in the recent year, about 8 million documents were published. The Financial Management Authority, the City of Reykjavík, the Social Insurance Administration, the Police and the National Registry are examples of parties that already publish data in the mailbox. Examples of such documents are public employee payrolls, payment statements, penalty notices, penalty notices and real estate appraisal.
In the first year of implementation, the priority will be to complete the implementation with those who have already started publication in the digital mailbox. In addition, the initiation of implementation will be examined for parties that are ready to connect to the digital mailbox and need to send large amounts of data from their homes to individuals and companies.
In 2023 and 2024, it is assumed that the implementation of a series of institutions will follow the division of the ministries into ministries, and the division of municipalities into regions.
Digital Iceland is responsible for overseeing the introduction of the digital mailbox in cooperation with the ministries, institutions and municipalities. The role of Digital Iceland is to supervise the implementation according to the implementation plan, provide advice on technical work to connect the information system of the parties to the digital mailbox and guide parties on how to use the mailbox. Each party is, however, responsible for prioritising its content for publication in the digital mailbox, as well as its internal work on bringing the content to publication.
The mailbox is available on My Pages on Ísland.is, and an app for Ísland.is will soon be published where the mailbox will also be accessible.