Building a digital factory from the ground up

“Our most important task is to take care of nature and the environment in Denmark within the framework set by the government and the Folketing (Danish Parliament). We ensure the Danes clean water, clean air and rich nature,” says Lars Møller Christiansen, Deputy Director of the Danish Environmental Protection Agency.

“It is just as relevant for citizens, companies and public authorities to have access to data on the state of water, nature and the environment as on the weather forecast. That is why we work purposefully to make it as easy to obtain updated environmental data as weather data, ”he continues.

Since 2018, the Danish Environmental Protection Agency has literally taken a big leap into digital transformation and the use of new technologies with the establishment of a digital factory called ‘JUMP’. Here, the agency has gained access to all the experts and relevant competencies needed to develop new digital solutions quickly and easily. The purpose is to support an agile and exploratory innovation process from tanks to design, testing and production.

An example of the Danish Environmental Protection Agency's many tasks is the monitoring of nature. Here, rubber boots, camera, paper and pen have for many years been fixed work tools when employees have been in the field to, for example, monitor the condition of different habitats or to check whether the environmental rules are complied with in large construction projects.

“New technology makes it possible to solve our tasks in completely new ways. We are gradually moving in the direction of new forms of work, where field work in rubber boots is supplemented with new digital forms of work based on drones, IoT, image recognition and other forms of artificial intelligence such as machine learning, ”says Lars Møller Christiansen.

"In a number of areas, it will make it possible to provide the data we provide today faster and more frequently, but also to make more and new data, services and analyzes available to citizens and businesses," he says.

High image quality and algorithms facilitate the work

Automated nature recognition is an example of one of the major digitization projects that has got off to a good start in a short time.

National legislation and EU directives require the Danish Environmental Protection Agency to monitor and protect various habitat types, and one of the tasks for the Danish Environmental Protection Agency's biologists is, among other things, to look after nature by the Wadden Sea. Every six years, biologists have studied the versatile nature of the Wadden Sea, but it is both difficult and costly to plan for the tide, which exposes and floods the seabed twice daily.

“We have tested drones for a short period, but quickly found out that using both existing aerial photos and data from the Danish Agency for Data Supply and Efficiency, both in terms of time and finances. We have also developed an advanced image recognition algorithm that can quickly help us show and delineate the habitat types in a given area. Something that today is done manually, ”says Lars Møller Christiansen.

"The project is showing a lot of promise, and the initial results have been so convincing that we will now also test the method for monitoring other habitat types across the country," he says.

Artificial intelligence suits the marine environment

Raw material extraction is another example of a major challenge that the Danish Environmental Protection Agency will solve with artificial intelligence. Ships that suck sand and gravel up from the sea to i.a. construction, must themselves indicate how many cubic meters they have sucked up. The figure is registered in a system that sends data to the Danish Environmental Protection Agency every three months. However, it is difficult to validate the absorbed amounts of sand and gravel.

Instead, using artificial intelligence and the ships' AIS signals, the Danish Environmental Protection Agency can identify the ships, analyze their sailing patterns around extraction areas and automatically indicate how many cubic meters of gravel and sand the ship has allegedly picked up from the seabed. The statement will be sent directly to the permit holder, who can quickly check with their own calculations and approve.

“With artificial intelligence, we can get a fairly accurate picture of how much sand and gravel a ship has sucked up. We thus also know in real time how much gravel and sand is left, and can refer other ships to the other extraction areas, if necessary. With accurate data, it will be easier to take good care of the marine environment, ”says the Danish Environmental Protection Agency, program manager Thomas Ravn, who took the initiative for the JUMP project.

Agile frameworks are crucial to success

In just six months, the Danish Environmental Protection Agency has achieved rapid results with these innovation projects. There is a clear reason for this, says Astrid Jacobsen, HR manager and business development manager at the Danish Environmental Protection Agency, who is also one of the initiators behind the project:

"Two things are crucial to success. The first is agility in the project processes. We have one partner who can mobilize the right skills in a few days. It ensures a significantly higher speed from thought to action, so that in a few days and weeks we can develop ideas and mature ideas for a project that was previously months or years in the making, ”she says and continues:

“The second is agility within the framework of JUMP, because it requires the right skills to succeed. The new technologies are moving very fast, and it is absolutely crucial for success that we get the necessary specialist competencies involved in the various projects. ”

Focus on the competencies 

Major digitization projects in the public sector can be challenging; there is a struggle for competencies, and bureaucracy creates slow processes. But based on own experiences, the message from the Danish Environmental Protection Agency is that the potentials for new technologies are great.
The agency hopes to be able to inspire other public authorities to create the right platform for their digital transformation and thus experience rapid results.

“JUMP is an engine that helps to transform the entire Danish Environmental Protection Agency, and which integrates new technologies into our work. We want to break with the traditional pattern and quickly jump into testing and application of new technologies, while at the same time increasing the technical and innovative competencies among the employees, ”says Lars Møller Christiansen.

And with the mantra 'think big, start small, scale quickly', JUMP also demands an agile cultural change, he says. The board's advice to public authorities who want digital transformation without wasted time is to start building capacity, adds Astrid Jacobsen :

“Without the right competencies, you will not achieve success, even though the development processes are quite agile. When you have competencies and frameworks in place, you quickly find effective ways to co-create. For the benefit of our core welfare. ”