Brazil expands agreement with Denmark to modernize public sector and intellectual property

 

INPI employees will receive training from the Danish Patent and Trademark Office

The government of Brazil expanded, this Thursday (20/3), the Strategic Cooperation project in the innovation sector with Denmark, in force since 2015.
 
Over the next three years, the project will focus on the digital transformation of the Brazilian government and on strengthening skills in the field of intellectual property in Brazil, through the sharing of Danish experiences.
 

 

The Deputy Secretary for Productivity, Employment and Competitiveness (Sepec) of the Ministry of Economy, Igor Calvet, highlighted the importance of the partnership with the European country, a reference in the digitization of public services, at the launch of the initiative, held in Brasília.
 
“Our system is still very analog. The process of digitizing processes and services delivers a better experience for users and facilitates the development of the business environment. With the best international practices, we are going to advance on these two fronts in the next period”, he said.
 
According to the special secretary for Debureaucratization, Management and Digital Government at the Ministry of Economy, Paulo Uebel, the Brazilian government's goal is to digitize more than a thousand services in two years. He mentioned, for example, that it is now possible to issue the International Traveler Vaccination Certificate over the internet, which is required by some countries to prove immunization against yellow fever.
 
“We need to take this experience to other sectors, especially those that impact the lives of the most vulnerable citizens, in the daily lives of workers and retirees,” he said.
 
For Uebel, the excess of ancillary obligations, of the Union, States and municipalities, and the regulatory bureaucracy make entrepreneurship difficult and indirectly impact the generation of jobs, income and opportunities. “We need to simplify and digitize processes to make life easier for businessmen and entrepreneurs”, he explained.
 
In this new phase of the cooperation project with Denmark, training is planned for the Danish Patent and Trademark Office (DKPTO) with examiners from the National Institute of Intellectual Property (INPI) to optimize and improve patent examination processes.
 
As an invited country, Argentina will integrate this new phase of the Brazil-Denmark innovation cooperation project.
 
Deputy Secretary for Productivity, Employment and Competitiveness, Igor Calvet, participates in the launch of the new phase of the Brazil-Denmark cooperation project at the Danish Embassy in Brasília
 
Danish experience
 
In the early 2000s, the Danish government started its digitization plan. According to the Danish ambassador to Brazil, Nicolai Prytz, one of the first assessments is that a new public service model would bring savings and more transparency to government actions.
 
“In order to put our project into practice, we made many mistakes and we want to share our experience so that Brazil can follow its trajectory more easily. We know that they are quite different realities: Denmark has a little more than 5.5 million inhabitants and Brazil 200 million. But we are impressed with the Brazilian government's commitment to the issue”, said Prytz.
 
Denmark ranks 1st in the overall e-government development index (EGDI), which assesses the state of e-government development of the Organization's 193 member states. Brazil is in 44th position.
 
Cooperation
 
Strategic Cooperation is coordinated by the Ministry of Economy, the National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI), the Danish Ministry of Industry, Business and Economic Affairs, the Danish Patent and Trademark Office (DKPTO), the Danish Digitization Agency, the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA).