As an expat American I was originally super pleased to see something like this was finally happening, however, this was quickly diminished once I tried signing up. It requires documents like a phone bill in English to verify my identity, which I simply cannot provide.
vidarh|4 years ago
Cue catch-22: To get one I needed to be able to receive mail at the address held by Norwegian tax authorities. They require you to file one notification when you move out of the country giving your new address, but not only don't require you to file notifications when you move again, but actively tell you not to. You can however tell them your new postal address which will be registered separately.
Except I'd never bothered before because I had no reason to, and now, to register a new postal address online or in fact to even get to the page that tells you how to file one, you need to log in with the an electronic id.
Fun times. I sent them an e-mail before christmas asking how exactly they expected me to be able to inform them of my new postal address - I'm sure they do have a fallback - but they've not yet answered.
Thankfully the department responsible for the covid entry forms answered my e-mails within an hour or two and told me it was fine to just fill in the form intended for foreign citizens so figuring out the electronic id it is now only a slightly amusing exercise in questioning the workings of bureaucracy (there workarounds I'm fairly certain would work involving showing up at the embassy or arranging to get a Norwegian bank account opened via the London office of a Norwegian bank, but since I don't actually need one, I haven't bothered exploring those)