Commentary: Netcompany's AI Savings Claim Triples the Government's Own Figure

Netcompany, the Danish IT consultancy, has published a report claiming that the public sector in Denmark could save 90,000 person-years (årsværk) by introducing AI solutions in a broad sense. The figure comes from Netcompany Institute, the company's own think tank, which carried out the calculation.

The piece is a commentary by Peter Christian Bech-Nielsen, founder and tech correspondent at Ingeniøren, published on 19 October. Its headline says Netcompany has tripled the government's "dream figure" for AI savings, which puts the report's number at roughly three times the government's own estimate of AI-saved person-years. The subhead says Danes are hostages to the "wild confusion" of imaginative AI numbers.

The commentary frames the choice facing Digitalisation Minister Christina Egelund (M) as a question: should she rely on the government's own figures for AI-saved person-years, or on the "wild calculation" of Netcompany chief executive André Rogaczewski? The headline's "Rogaczewski to the rescue" is ironic in tone. The author also notes, with evident sarcasm, that it was fortunate the calculation was done by Netcompany Institute, "for the sake of independence." This points to a conflict of interest: a company that sells IT services to the public sector produced a large estimate of the benefits of buying them.

The rest of the text is not available beyond this opening, so the commentary's detailed arguments and the report's method are not covered here. The piece is explicitly the author's personal opinion. It matters because the size of the claimed AI savings can shape public-sector digitalisation policy and spending, and because two very different official-looking numbers are circulating in the Danish debate.