Why EPR Forum's Social Entrepreneurship is important for the public Governmental sectors in general:

CEO EPR-forum: Hans A. Kielland Aanesen

Social entrepreneurship is to introduce new solutions to social problems and make these service solutions available to as many people as possible. This is only enabled through open neutral not-for profit organizations that is seeking methods and mechanisms for common international interoperating rules and open integration regimes. Social entrepreneurship has primarily to do with actions and usually less to do with politics. Never the less "social entrepreneurship" in a well developed country as Norway with a high focus on public legislated welfare and healthcare need to be "political" since contact with public authorities is inevitably. Because of involving both public and commercial interests it's incredibly important to differ between the public administrative role and industry's commercial role without mixing these roles like it is today.

Some looks upon organizations like OASIS and EPR-forum as a democratic problem since their social entrepreneurship tries to solve the problems the welfare state is struggling with. We consider the social challenges from the sidelines and feel that the public sector so far is not able to find the right solutions. Many feel our lives are too short in waiting for the new fair solutions to happen. Those who experience the challenges and problems of today's health care services in Norway have even less time to get proper help.

In the lack of needed upcoming public solutions it pushes creativity and initiatives from citizens who have worked with collaboration issues, ICT integration and harvesting "best practice" processes and procedures in the commercial life into Social Entrepreneurship. We in the EPR Forum and by OASIS represent such an initiative for new solutions when the public so far have failed in progress.
The politicians and bureaucrats want solutions, but it appears obviously that they unfortunately do not know how and leave their public administrative role to commercial market forces alone resulting in today’s anarchy and the catastrophic dead end progress.

The Norwegian Ministry of Trade & Industry has just announced an evaluation study concerning the potential use of social entrepreneurship in Norway. The recognition and positive attitude that lies in these statements and initiatives are encouraging. But it is not primarily the design, but the execution of the policy that currently slows the progress of new social solutions. The Norwegian Interaction reform is just empty words if you do not know how it should be realized.
It should also be noted that the Social Entrepreneurship do not substitute public, nonprofit or private organizations solutions. It is a no man's land, or perhaps better an "all-man's land" where the public, nonprofit and private spheres overlap. In this area where all the three sectors know that they fall short, the social entrepreneurs find new solutions by combining new and existing methods. The responsibility of the public sector, the motivation of nonprofit organizations, and the efficiency of the private industry must be exploited by adding a new idea or method at the top that can make enormous difference to people that so far not has been seen or achieved.
The current government support to entrepreneurs is primarily given to those who are business oriented with traditional goals and markets. Innovation Norway should make another attempt to find an arrangement that includes those who also have social goals. While we wait for it, several organizations can provide what they already do nicely in cooperation with social entrepreneurship. Just some small financial support and initial funding along with some business advices are needed to initiate these crucial Social Entrepreneurship initiatives.

Another challenge is the bidding rules in the public sector. These rules are designed to promote quality and affordable services, but to avoid taking risks on new innovated solutions, the public sector usually select well-established providers. With the current lack of public supervision and quality assurance measurement regarding these deliveries run the risk that the quality and price do not say anything about the achieved and needed social results. New innovative related offers that seem to be brilliant according to social results tend to loose in competition with the more traditional established vendors because of price and quality even if the needed social results is not that satisfactory.

There are already many attempts on social innovation in the public sector. EPR-forum is happy to create a laboratory for testing and deploy open superstructure mechanisms giving effects of the public social results and initiate related new commercial businesses. This to avoid annoying public noise and attention in the media on the public organizations and institutions as NAV, Hospitals, Nursing homes, child welfare, drug addiction treatment, school or others when projects and new systems do not work properly or if the results is not as expected.
EPR forum with its Social Entrepreneurship has invested and developed mechanism ideas obviously making major changes for many individuals needing healthcare services.

Our contention is that the community commits a much greater risk by not trying these new social community-based open platform solutions, which may result in new functional commercial solutions.