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Domesticating Technology AVE Afleveret Copy 2 Domesticating technology: The creation of the Central Person Registry in Denmark BY ANDERS VIND EBBESEN On May 29 1968, the Danish parliament unanimously voted in favor of the introduction of a Central Person Registry (CPR) in Denmark. Later that year, in October, Danish citizens received a card with their personal identification number. The events of 1968 marked the con- clusion of a decade-long process, where new technology was embraced and adopted by different parts of the bureaucracy at varying paces. The purpose of this paper is to investigate and analyse the process that led to the – in most regards – successful introduction of the CPR. The relationship between technology and bureaucracy receives partic- ular attention. The narrative of the paper will place the system and the actors involved in its creation at centre stage. At the same time, the institutional structure in which the actors played their parts is illumi- nated, and so is the technological paradigm in which the institutions acted. Datacentralen plays an important part in the exposition. As an enterprise jointly owned by various units of the public sector, but ulti- mately controlled by the Ministry of Finance, Datacentralen had a unique role in brokering technology to the bureaucracy. This paper will unfortunately leave some stones unturned. The primary aim is to investigate the relationship between technology and the bureaucracy. As a result, technical issues will only be explained insofar as they contribute to understanding the relationship with the bureaucracy. After a historiographical overview, the main part of this paper pre- sents the the introduction of the CPR in chronological sequence, roughly encompassing three phases: The idea phase, the project phase, and the public phase. Before this, though, it is necessary to sketch out the paradigm that enabled the idea of a CPR to be conceived in the first place. Therefore, a summary of how the technology of computing 2 Anders Vind Ebbesen machinery was transferred to Denmark in the post-war years is pro- vided. Historiography The literature dealing with the introduction of the CPR is quite lim- ited. It has only been possible to identify five occurrences, where the history of the CPR is described in reasonable detail. The first time was in the self-published I/S Datacentralen af 1959 igennem 25 år (I/S Data- centralen of 1959 through 25 years), which celebrated and recounted the history of Datacentralen from the founding until 1984.1 The publi- cation is packed with anecdotes and memories of early employees and collaborators. Both Willy Olsen (managing director of Datacentralen from its founding until 1982) and Oluf Callesen (employed at Data- centralen since 1960) touch upon the history of the CPR in their re- spective chapters. However, the chapter written by Henrik Nielsen provides the most comprehensive coverage of the CPR-system. Niel- sen is colloquially known as “Mr. CPR” and with good reason. As chief of section at the CPR-Secretariat from its creation in 1965 until his retirement in 1991 he stewarded the system on behalf of the gov- ernment.2 Nielsen provides a quite typical bureaucratic explanation for the creation of the CPR-system: The growth of the public admin- istration increased the demand for common personal data (i.e. name and address). At the same time, a CPR-system was a pre-requisite for forthcoming changes in the government administration, most im- portantly the planned introduction of a Pay-As-You-Earn (PAYE) tax scheme. Nielsen lists a few dates of special importance in his brief overview: In March 1967 it was announced to all Danish municipali- ties, that they must mechanize their local registries and in April 1968 the mechanized data were handed over to Datacentralen,3 which in turn imported them and started assigning Personal Identification 1 Willy Olsen et. al., I/S Datacentralen af 1959 igennem 25 år (Valby: I/S Data- centralen, 1984). 2 The office, which manages the CPR system on behalf of the Minister of the Interior, has had three names. From 1965 until 1981 it was named Sekretariatet for Personregistrering (The Personregistration Secretariat). Between 1981 and 1991 it was called Afdeling for Personregistrering (The Personregistration Division) and from 1991 onwards it has been known as CPR-kontoret (The CPR-office). In this paper, “secretariat” will be used throughout. 3 ”Mechanization” in this paper refers to the transfer of data from paper cata- logues to either punched cards and/or magnet tapes. Domesticating technology: Creation of the CPR in Denmark 3 Numbers (PINs) to each citizen.4 These dates are noteworthy, consid- ering the fact that – as mentioned in the introduction – the bill that enabled the creation of the CPR-system was not passed until late May 1968 and, as will be described in detail later in this paper, it was first submitted to the Danish parliament as late as November 1967. In short: If the dates presented by Nielsen are correct, the CPR-system was implemented before the bill had been introduced in parliament, and the system had entered into an active production phase before the law was passed. Coincidentally, Henrik Nielsen is also the author of the second text describing the history of the CPR.5 Just before his retirement in 1991, the permanent secretary at the Ministry of the Interior asked him to outline the history. Nielsen once again emphasises the general need for address data and personal identification in the governmental admin- istration as the reason for creating the CPR, and once again the PAYE tax scheme is mentioned. More importantly, Nielsen traces the history of personal registration back to the early twentieth century, where the idea of a central personal registry was explicitly present in a proposal to a then-new personal registration law. The idea of a central registry was dropped, though, before the law was passed in 1924.6 The first treatment of the history of the CPR by a trained historian is found in Lars Heide’s magnum opus Hulkort og EDB i Danmark 1911- 1970 (Punched Card and Computer Technology in Denmark 1911- 1970) from 1996. The book oscillates between a traditional chronolog- ical description of actors and events, and broader discussions on tech- nology diffusion and adaption. The chapters on Datacentralen focus on its position within the political system and implicitly its changing role: Originally intended as a primary driver for technological change in the public sector, Datacentralen was soon embraced by the existing bureaucracy and its role was reduced to a mere supplier of technologi- cal services, albeit a very important and preferred one.7 Heide agrees with Nielsen, that the PAYE system was the real reason for the crea- 4 Olsen et al., Datacentralen, 50-51. 5 Henrik Nielsen, CPR – Danmarks Folkeregister (København: Indenrigsministe- riet: Afdelingen for Personregistrering, 1991). 6 Ibid., chapter II. 7 Lars Heide, Hulkort og EDB i Danmark 1911-1970 (Århus: Systimes Teknolo- gihistorie, 1996), 211-221. 4 Anders Vind Ebbesen tion of the CPR and refers to a commission report from 1963,8 which considered such a registry a technical pre-requisite for PAYE taxa- tion.9 Heides breezes over original archival material but includes a wide range of secondary written sources in addition to a sizeable amount of interviews with key actors (including e.g. Willy Olsen). The forth publication worth mentioning was written by Hanne Willumsen, a law graduate employed at the CPR-Office, in 1999. The book Folkeregistreringen 75 år i 1999 (75 years of civil registration) was published by the Ministry of the Interior. It was intended for and di- rected at a general readership. Willumsen was at the time of publica- tion actively involved in a reform of the law concerning the CPR. In the introduction, it is openly admitted that the book mainly enumer- ates the rules that have defined the registration of persons in Denmark for the last 75 years and does not provide a scholarly or critical analy- sis of the development.10 Although mainly concerned with commission reports, legal technicalities, and the relationship between the central government and municipalities as well as the complex issues related to Greenland and Faroe Islands the book does provide a robust explana- tion for the creation of CPR: »The underlying idea linking the civil registers with EDP was the planned introduction of the PAYE tax scheme. From the outset, the PAYE scheme was planned to be based on EDP. The civil registries formed the foundation for the register of taxpayers, and consequently for the entire electronic calculation and levying of taxes.«11 The most recent book analyzing the introduction of the CPR is Ny viden – gamle ideer: Elektroniske registres indførelse i centraladministrationen (New knowledge – old ideas: Introduction of Electronic Registers in the Central Administration) written by a team of scholars at Rigsarkivet (Danish National Archives). Else Hansen touches upon the CPR- system in the introduction and Asbjørn Romvig Thomsen specifically explores the CPR-system in a chapter dedicated to that purpose. The book references all the aforementioned publications by Nielsen, Heide and Willumsen and the result is a broad survey of the political and juridical background for the introduction of the CPR-system. In con- 8 Indenrigsministeriet, Betænkning nr. 329: Betænkning om folkeregistrernes medvirken ved indførsel af elektronisk databehandling i den offentlige forvaltning m.v. (København: Indenrigsministeriet, 1963). 9 Heide, Hulkort, 227. 10 Hanne Willumsen, Folkeregistreringen 75 år i 1999 (København: CPR- kontoret, Indenrigsministeriets department, 1999), Introduction. 11 Willumsen, Folkeregistreringen, chapter 11. Danish wording in Appendix A-1. Domesticating technology: Creation of the CPR in Denmark 5 trast to the previous authors, Thomsen also exemplifies how technolo- gy itself was seen as a driver of change.12 To sum up the historiography, the consensus is that the CPR was a necessary tool for the introduction of the PAYE tax.
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