The City of Västerås develops e-administration with FormPipe W3D3

The municipal government of Västerås, in central Sweden, faced procurement of an IT solution for
case and document management several years ago. Karin Hjärpe, Operations Manager of the City
Executive Office, saw the potential to gain better control and make working procedures and decisionmaking
processes more effective. The city selected FormPipe W3D3 and because of their clearly defined
objectives, the municipality is a model for digital case management in the country.

The background to their change process came in the form of several reports showing quality shortcomings in case processing in municipal offices. Not least, this involved significant differences in working
methods. Every office in the city’s organization worked differently and it was all mostly done manually. The city was faced with the choice of renewing its agreement with their IT provider or looking for a new kind
of information processing solution.

Operations Manager, Karin Hjärpe, saw the potential for gaining comprehensive control over the entire decision-making process – from start to finish – while creating processes with higher quality, and greater
efficiency and accessibility. So she initiated creating a ‘state of readiness’ that involved defining and clarifying the working methods to be used in city offices to achieve its objectives. As she says, “The system we wanted had to support our processes.”

Extensive requirements

The city of Västerås wanted a comprehensive solution that enabled total digitalization of their processes
from beginning to end that was simple enough to be used by several different professions. The requirements specification the city managers developed was very comprehensive and based on their digital vision, described in detail down to each function and the need to support desired working methods.
“We had to choose between renewing our existing agreement, building our own system, or initiating a procurement process based on the requirements specification that came out of our process mapping. We
concluded by calling off FormPipe W3D3 through our existing framework agreement with Verva (Formally
the national purchasing agency, now the Kammarkollegiet, the Legal, Financial and Administrative Services
Agency) and asked some difficult questions,’ relates Jenny Broberg Kudryk, a developer in the Västerås
municipal administrative offices.

Accessibility and automated processes

Today, data entry specialist, city council committee secretaries, case managers, and their managers, all
use FormPipe W3D3. The municipality has transferred most of their previously manually processed matters
into the digital system that has simplified and speeded every stage of the decision-making process. Now, most of the city’s paperwork is managed digitally. Paper documents are scanned on receipt into archival formats and then case management processes proceed digitally throughout their entire lifecycle— except when they are sent to municipal politicians for consideration. All these matters and documentation
are then converted to archival format for digital storage. That’s why the City Registrar has a paper-less
desk (other than the few specified documents that require an actual signature.)

“Accessibility is probably the most significant change compared to before. Our case managers no longer have to rely on the registrar being on duty, but rather can search for the necessary documentation themselves,” notes Ms. Broberg Kudryk.

Broad implementation and support

Implementation started with the registrar’s office, but other groups had to wait for necessary modifications
and testing. As part of the implementation, all users received training in both the legal and technical
support issues involved. No users were allowed to use the system without this training. The Västerås
municipal offices have also initiated so-called change process teams, where each administrative office
created its own team consisting of the office registrar, the council committee secretary, a case manager, and in some cases, the senior manager.

“We see that the broad process of gaining support on all administrative levels in the organization, the
comprehensive process mapping, and the work of the ‘change process teams’, combined with a focused project organization lead by a fantastic project.

FormPipe W3D3 is now used by data entry personnel, case managers, municipal council committee secretaries, and managers. manager who as stayed throughout the five year implementation, all contributed to the success of this whole process,” concludes Ms. Broberg Kudryk.