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Additional data from surveys done by the Ministry of Research and Information Technology has been incorporated in this paper as well. The survey on IT in the private sector (Ministry of Research and Information Technology, 1997a) was based upon 2,001 questionnaires distributed to Danish companies. 387 were returned. Companies with 50+ employees have an over representation in the number of returned questionnaires. The survey of IT in the public sector covers the local authorities (Ministry of Research and Information Technology, 1997b) with responses from 205 of the 275 Danish municipalities and 12 of the 14 Danish counties.
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We see that within the local government, only 8% of the municipalities used EDI, whereas 75% of the counties and 15% of the private enterprises used electronic commerce within procurement. Thus, while EDI adoption has been quite successful at the county level, substantial opportunities exist for increasing electronic transactions at the lower governmental levels.
When considering the variety of tasks in which EDI is used, approximately 50% of the counties used it to obtain information about products and services, whereas roughly 42% used it for payment. In contrast, only 5% of the municipalities used it for payment purposes. Thus counties appear to have a significant lead in utilizing electronic commerce. This is most likely attributable to the business-to-business EDI predominant in the health sector, which is primarily administrated by the counties in Denmark.
We further note that 60% of the ministries and 36% of agencies and directorates have a home page. 90% of the ministries and 53% of agencies and directorates may be contacted via an official E-mail address. 36% of the counties have a home page and 64% have an E-mail address. 16% of the municipalities have a home page and 30% have an E-mail address (Ministry of Research and Information Technology, 1997).
Accessing the overall organizational transformation via IT, most of the applications are localized or integrated internally. However, there has been a high degree of informatization during the period 1993-1996. In 1993, for example, 31% of the central government units had no use of electronic records, management systems or mail systems, while in 1996, only 4 percent have no use of these applications. Similarly, in 1995, 6% of the municipalities used electronic incoming mail and electronic case administraion, while in 1996, 51% of the municipalities used these applications.
Our survey (Andersen and others, 1998b) shows a continuous increase in number of EDI-messages transferred through VANS-operators and a sharp increase in number of companies capable of sending and receiving EDIFACT.
As shown in Table 5, more EDIFACT messages have been sent via VANS measured both in terms of number and size. From 1995-1997 the EDIFACT application has increased on average by approx. 45% annually in terms of number of messages and by approx. 33% in terms of size of messages. If we compare the number of bytes via VANS in EDIFACT-format in December 1997 with the number in January 1995, the increase amounts to approx. 82% over the three years. Measured in terms of messages, the study shows that 176% more messages were sent in December 1997 compared with January 1995 (Figure 2).
Table 6 shows the sharp increase in the number of companies capable of sending and receiving EDIFACT messages. The analysis of the number of users of the EDIFACT standard in Denmark shows a particular increase in the number of small companies among the new users of EDIFACT. From 1995 to 1996 the total number of companies that could send/receive EDIFACT messages increased by 26 percent compared to 31 percent from 1996 to 1997. Among the small companies the increase amounted to 90 percent from 1996 to 1997.
Rather than using VANS operators, one might use the Internet for EDI. Approximately 50% of Danish enterprises with more than 5 employees have access to the Internet. Almost 80% of the enterprises communicate electronically from the enterprise via call connections or leased lines (Ministry of Research and Information Technology, 1997).
At present, it is very limited how much companies apply browser-EDI for business-to-business trade. Only five per cent of the companies have used the Internet for electronic commerce, whereas approx. 35% of the companies use EDI via VANS or proprietary (closed) circuits. As yet, the companies are not convinced that delivery is ensured, nor secured, on the Internet.
It is predicted that browser-EDI, which can be called a relatively inexpensive integration of the extreme ends of the value chains, will continue to make headway. The end of the communication where the EDI, possibly the EDIFACT message, is integrated into the company’s other business processes will benefit substantially from this. Therefore, the solution must be seen as a first step towards full integration in the "browser end" in order that data also can be interchanged electronically with the other business processes in this end.
The companies will increasingly apply browser-EDI so they themselves can offer "VANS-services" and services/sales via Web pages on the Internet. According to our estimates this will not reduce the number of companies that apply EAN-numbers or the number and the size of EDIFACT-transmissions.
The tables’ extreme left column shows industry areas. The cells of the tables show our estimate of the present coverage in percentages at the beginning of 1998 for the three categories in addition to our estimate of the annual increase in the period 1998-2000. In the insurance area less than 10% of communication is made by means of proprietary standards, more than 50% of communication takes place via EDIFACT, while there is less than 1% application of browser-EDI internally in the industry. In the next 2 - 3 years the industry expects EDIFACT- application to increase by 10-20% and browser-EDI application by 20-30%.
The growth in brackets denotes the expected annual growth in messages measured in percentage of the previous year for the period 1998 - ultimo 2000.
n. a. means "not available".
* domestic messages; but >90% coverage of non-domestic messages.
It has not been possible to compile enough data to give a precise summary of the current distribution of EDI usage among our three EDI classes. A prediction of the future distribution is, of course, even harder to make. Based on our current information, a yearly growth in number of transactions between 30% and 50% is not unlikely.
Compared to the total amount of EDI-usage, Browser-EDI is especially likely to raise its share (from 10% to 25%), while the EDIFACT-based EDI is only expected to raise from 50% to 55% in the 1998-2000 period. Consequently the share of proprietary standards is expected to deminish from 40% to 20%. Figure 3 summarizes the distribution of EDI usage among our 3 EDI types by early 1998 and by the end of year 2000.
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