evidoria

← Back to browse

Good practice Imported

Utvei — Digital School Platform for Norwegian Prisons

Norway · Mandal · See the Norway profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 66% 56/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

Norway piloted Utvei, a secure digital school platform (Microsoft Teams/Office 365 plus ~170 whitelisted sites) at Agder Prison, Mandal, from February 2024, giving incarcerated students ICT tools comparable to mainstream schools, amid NGO criticism over surveillance.

17-90%
School-place coverage range across facilities (pre-Utvei baseline) (2022)
30-60%
Inmates participating in any education (pre-Utvei baseline) (2022)
~170
Whitelisted educational websites in Utvei

Details

Maturity
Pilot
Promoter
Kriminalomsorgsdirektoratet (Norwegian Correctional Service Directorate) & Agder fylkeskommune
Period
2024–present (pilot)
Keywords
prison education, digital literacy, justice-involved populations, e-learning, correctional services

Context

Norway's Correctional Service Directorate (Kriminalomsorgsdirektoratet) and county education authorities responded to an October 2022 Riksrevisjonen (Office of the Auditor General) audit finding that school-place coverage in Norwegian prisons ranged from 17% (Verdal fengsel) to 90% across facilities, with only 30-60% of inmates participating in any education, and rating the state's compensation for inmates' lack of digital access as a "serious" gap.

Objectives

Give incarcerated students ICT tools comparable to mainstream schools, replacing the older "Desktop for skolen" system, and support vocational training, languages, sciences and reintegration.

Activities

Utvei provides a restricted version of Microsoft Teams and Office 365 plus a curated list of roughly 170 whitelisted educational websites (dictionaries, encyclopaedias, GeoGebra, coding tutorials, news, career guidance). It was piloted from 28 February 2024 at the school unit inside Agder fengsel, Mandal avdeling, with several more prisons subsequently joining and a national rollout intended, including faster deployment to women's prisons.

Conclusions

Agder county's education director described the pilot as "unique in Norway, and likely also internationally." The prisoners'-interest organisation Fangeforeningen has criticised screen-recording functionality introduced alongside Utvei, calling it a "digital glass house" and warning of possible mission creep if security-purpose data were repurposed for investigations. No Utvei-specific participant, device or outcome figures have been published.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Medium (€50k–€500k) — No budget figures published; estimated medium cost as a government-run national software platform (Teams/O365 licensing, whitelisting infrastructure, IT support) reused across multiple prison sites rather than new hardware or construction.
Time to results
Medium (1–3 years) — Piloted from February 2024 with phased expansion to further prisons and a stated national rollout ambition, but no fixed end date given.
Staffing & skills
Kriminalomsorgsdirektoratet (Norwegian Correctional Service Directorate) IT/education staff, Agder county (fylkeskommune) education authority, school-unit teachers inside participating prisons

Conditions for success

  • Joint ownership between correctional service and county education authority
  • Curated, restricted whitelist balancing access with security
  • Phased rollout starting from a single pilot site before scaling

Common failure modes

  • NGO criticism that screen-recording turns the classroom into a "digital glass house", risking loss of a surveillance-free space seen as important for rehabilitation
  • Risk of mission creep if security-purpose monitoring data were repurposed for investigations

Where it fits

Governance type
national correctional service + regional education authority
Scale
single-facility pilot expanding to multiple prisons
Income level
high-income (Norway)

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes

Indicative funding routes for practices of this type — always check each programme's current calls and eligibility rules.

Do you run this practice? Claim it — verified implementers get a public contact pathway and can propose corrections.

Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

Similar practices you may find useful