On Thursday morning, Sweden's Minister of Social Affairs, Lena Hallengren, said that Sweden will introduce a vaccine passport for everyone who has been vaccinated. [With a vaccine passport] "you can travel again, among other things, but there must be international cooperation around this. We must have an international standard in place", said Hallengren.
Earlier, the Danish, Icelandic and Finnish governments have announced that they will also issue digital corona passports - to get the wheels of society going again. Thus, Norway is the only country in Scandinavia that has not come out with this news yet.
Summer
ICT Norway wants the Norwegian government to step up now. "We challenge the Norwegian authorities to find a quick solution for digital corona passports. Look at our neighboring countries, Iceland, Sweden, Finland and Denmark are in the process of designing a passport", says Fredrik Syversen, director of strategy and business development in ICT-Norway, to Norwegian paper Nettavisen.
Syversen believes a vaccine passport will be very important for Norway. "A quick solution to digital vaccine passports will be useful for everyone, not least for parts of the business community that have a degree of international staff, or need to travel", he says.
He also emphasizes that Norway already has good technical solutions, which can be implemented quickly: "Norway has a very good infrastructure to put in place a digital vaccine passport by the summer. Good Norwegian ID solutions such as BankID and patient records mean that it will be relatively easy to develop such passports with sufficient security", says Syversen.
Contact
"In addition, "Minhelse" ('MyHealth', ed.) has become a hub that will naturally make digital vaccine passports available to large parts of the Norwegian population", Syversen points out. He believes the government should now contact our neighboring country in the south, Denmark. "IBM in Denmark says they can create a solution for digital vaccine passes quickly. It would be a logical step for the Norwegian authorities to contact them", he says.
IBM Denmark has been working on a solution for digital vaccine passes for nine months, and states that they can have technical solutions ready in a month's time. The plan for the Danish authorities is that the passports will be rolled out to vaccinated Danes in three to four months (April/May, ed.)
Events and international travel
The great hope is that the vaccine passports will make it possible for vaccinated people to be released from quarantine when they cross national borders. In addition, the passes can open a room for business events, large concerts, festivals and other events with many participants. The passport can thus save the summer holidays for many, the cultural life that is largely abandoned and it can mean a lot for international business events.
