A recently released report emphasizes a lack of collaboration between Swedish municipalities, leading to missed opportunities for efficient digitalization. This is an alarming discovery that Frends wants to help solve – with, amongst other things, an integration forum.
The Swedish Agency for Digital Government (Digg) recently released a report analyzing the state of digitalization in Swedish society, including the digital competence of the population and the digital transformation of public administration. The report reveals several benefits of sharing solutions and data in public administration. However, a lack of collaboration among government agencies hinders efficient digitalization.
Compared to other countries, Sweden's public administration is progressing slowly in terms of digitalization, with uneven delivery of public digital services. Frends is committed to addressing this issue by advocating for open-source solutions and streamlining integration systems. Tomas Beijar, Technical Sales Manager at Frends, explains:
“A part of our efforts to reverse this negative trend is with an integration forum for municipalities. It’s a forum on Github where our customers can share both design templates and technical components, together with a Teams channel where they can discuss the solutions with each other, ask questions and share other tips.”
Collaboration at the Core The core purpose of the forum is to encourage municipalities to help each other and share their own solutions or those developed by Frends in previous projects implemented for clients.
“The forum is centered on collaboration, with a focus on opening up and sharing the deep knowledge and expertise that exists among the participants. The ability to collaborate and share knowledge between municipalities is crucial, especially in the context of digitalization in the public sector going forward. For municipalities, this includes cost savings, shorter implementation times, and reduced reliance on vendors,” says Tomas and continues:
“Initially, we discussed if sharing something means being responsible if it doesn't work for another municipality. But, we decided to remove this concern entirely. Now, municipalities should think of it as a starting point that needs adjustments to fit their specific needs. This way, it's more encouraging for everyone to collaborate.”
Taking the Next Step In the future, the forum hosted by Frends will continue to provide municipalities with opportunities to share and learn from each other's solutions.
“The number of participants is constantly increasing, and it seems like this is something that municipalities really have longed for. Especially the smaller municipalities that have a lower budget and fewer resources. If a larger municipality can share their solution for a pupil system or similar, it truly eases a burden from the smaller ones”, says Tomas.
In the future, Frends will develop and keep the forum interesting and alive. This may include physical meetings, seminars, guest speakers, specific themes, and ‘forum days’ to increase interaction between participants. Frends is also currently discussing creating a forum for other sectors. Tomas explains:
“We have received requests from customers in other industries, but we’re at the beginning of that journey. Currently, we’re trying to find shared factors so they truly benefit from a forum – just like the municipalities are doing today.”
If you’re interested in how the Frends integration can benefit your organization, join the conversation and read more here.
