Research & Technology Development: Denmark

There are a lot of different research and demonstration projects currently undergoing in Denmark. Most of these are public sponsored and takes part in co-operation between public authorities, interest organisations and to some extent private enterprises. Public projects are mainly focus on general research and demonstration projects, while application development projects takes place in a private enterprise context. In 1999 the research council allocated 33 million DKr (4.400000 Euro) to research and demonstration projects within the field of elderly citizens and ICT. Most of the projects participating in this programme are concerned with the following agendas:

• Creating and research on new pedagogically principles that can be used to teach senior citizens ICT skills.
• Research on how to create an all-inclusive and democratic society by way of ICT.
• How to use ICT to facilitate a more flexible retirement process for senior staff.
• E-commerce - how senior citizens can engage themselves in e-commerce and thus lessen the strain on the public home-care personnel who uses lots of time doing this task.

Governmental bodies organise the projects and fund allocation but only rarely do they participate directly. Regional (counties, hospitals and care centres) and local authorities (municipalities and local public institutions) often participate directly. Interest/pressure groups are a natural part of these projects, even though they also have their own research projects.