The Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration (NAV) was established on 1 July 2006. Local authorities and the government are cooperating on the most wide-ranging, fundamental welfare reform of modern times.
The first pilot offices were opened in the autumn of 2006. By the end of 2008, 239 NAV offices had been established. 153 new offices will be established during 2009, and the last 11 offices will be established during the first quarter of 2010. Once all of them are in place there will be 457 NAV offices. In the meantime NAV will continue to work separately as NAV Work and NAV Social Security in a number of local authorities.
Staff from the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Service and the local authority work together at the NAV offices to find good solutions for their users. Local authorities and NAV offices in the relevant county sign a cooperation agreement describing what services the local office shall offer.
The services provided by a NAV office will vary from local authority to local authority. The minimum requirements are:
The Norwegian Labour and Welfare Service is the state-owned part of the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration and has a staff of around 14,000. The Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration also includes local authority staff working at the NAV offices.
NAV administers one third of the national budget through schemes such as unemployment benefit, rehabilitation, pensions, child benefit and cash benefit, and counts the entire population as its users.
In addition to the NAV offices, more than one hundred special units perform tasks on behalf of the NAV offices.
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