The Directorate for Public Management and eGovernment (Difi) shall contribute to strengthen the government's work with renewing the public sector and make it effective and more easily accessible. Difi shall also aid the state in being organised and led in a good manner, with necessary co-ordination across sectors.

Difi has paramount responsibility for the ID port, MinID, Digital contact register and Digital mail boxes of the inhabitants.

The ID port is a hub/ trust anchor for the service providers in the public sector which shall cover authentication, signing, message encryption and other future functions which naturally fall under this system. The ID port connects service providers and E-ID suppliers together and is a common component in the public sector. At this point in time, the system has functionality for authentication and is integrated with E-ID on level 4 with Buypass AS, Commfides Norge AS and BankID Norge AS. In addition, Difi's own solution on level 3 MinID is used. The solution was established in 2009, and in 2014 handled over 52 000 000 log ins to public network services, with about 3 500 000 users. The ID port is a common component in the public sector and is used by more than 360 public entities.

Numerous public entities have a need for end users to be able to digitally sign documents that are delivered to the entity. In the strategy for the ID port 2015-2020, this is one of the main objectives. The main objective is defined as "Public services joint need for signature and validation services is covered." The following strategy is established to reach the objective: "Establish signature services in the ID port that customers can utilise to allow end users to sign documents."

To realise the objective in the strategy for the ID port, it has been decided to procure an agreement for signature services in the ID port.

With this procurement Difi acts on behalf of the entire public sector where the signature services is intended for use by public entities (both national and municipal), see point 1.5. In this regard Difi is considered to be a procurement centre, cf. the public procurement regulations (PPR) § 4-1 letter g, cf. § 3-13.