Their most important duties are therefore tasks directed at the Folketing, e.g. drafting bills, answering questions from the Folketing, considering applications for appropriations from the Folketing or issuing statutory instruments. In addition to the departments and directorates there is in the central administration a large number of organs with several members, allowing the involvement of specialists and representatives of interest groups. Such councils and committees are usually advisory, but there are also some committees which can decide on complaints or distribute sums of money. The local state administration consists of some national branches of administration, such as the police, the prison service, the post office and factory inspection authorities and some institutions or bodies that provide services in different parts of the country, e.g. universities, regional archives, the lifeboat service etc. The areas of competence of municipal administrations include a very large part of the specialist areas in which the public administration is in any way involved.
Municipal administration is limited geographically rather than according to specialist areas.
The highest authority in each municipality is a popularly elected council, and the form of management is arranged in such a way that all political groupings are able to exert influence on the administration. The distinction between government and opposition, which is a feature of state government, is only found in a watered-down version in the local authorities. Around the nucleus represented by the public state or municipal administration, there is a large number of different kinds of institutions bordering on the private sector. Numerically, the administration is by far the greatest part of the Danish state apparatus. Its relationship to other state organs is therefore of the greatest importance for an understanding of the administration and of the state governmental apparatus as a whole.