The concept of a joint residents' meeting is cropping up more and more often in discussions about municipal digitization. It is also a clear focus within Handslaget, where the initiative's basic conditions for a joint residents' meeting (G-SIM) are currently undergoing qualification.
But what exactly is lacking today, and why are individual e-services and point solutions no longer sufficient?
The challenge today is not a lack of services
Most municipalities today offer many digital services. The problem is rather how they are connected. Or not connected.
From the resident's perspective, it often involves:
- Many different inputs with different appearances, languages, and logic
- Difficult to get an overview of one's involvement in the municipality
- Limited insight into status history and decisions in ongoing cases
- No possibility to represent children, relatives, companies, or associations
- An experience that becomes fragmented and reactive instead of cohesive and proactive
Residents don't deal with government agencies; they deal with life. Housing, business, family, school, building permits, and care. Digital interactions rarely reflect that.
The municipalities' perspective reflects the same problem
G-SIM clearly points out that this is not an isolated system problem, but rather a structural problem.
Many municipalities are struggling with:
- Business systems that describe cases and status in different ways
- Data locked in systems and difficult to share
- Lack of an overall picture of residents and businesses
- No viable basis for a joint residents' meeting or My Pages in practice
At the same time, national developments are moving forward. Initiatives such as My Affairs, My Representatives, contact details, notifications, and future national interfaces require municipalities to have their information and objects in order.
A common foundation instead of 290 separate solutions
In our municipal projects, we see that the needs are the same regardless of municipality size or organization. Therefore, we do not believe that each municipality should build its own system from scratch.
Together with municipalities such as Karlskrona and Lidingö, we are already working on the next generation of My Pages. Not as a new operating system, but as a neutral layer on top of existing systems.
This means, among other things:
- A shared portal with different maturity levels and focus areas
- A unified view of objects where residents, businesses, properties, families, representatives, and cases are linked together
- Same basic structure but local adaptation of content, processes, and graphic profile
- A consolidated view where everything related to the resident is in one place
This is entirely in line with G-SIM's focus. Creating conditions, standards, and working methods to enable a unified residents' meeting.
Start right, even if you start small
A joint residents' meeting does not necessarily mean a major introduction straight away. Quite the contrary.
We see that the municipalities that are most successful:
- Start by defining a few priority items
- Maps the status of language and relationships between systems
- Testing the whole thing in a neutral interface early on
- Building further step by step based on feedback and actual usage
The important thing is to start with the right structure before technology or procurement locks in the future.
Our vision for the future
The joint residents' meeting is not about a product; it is about creating a sustainable, shareable, and scalable foundation for how municipalities interact with residents and businesses digitally. G-SIM sets the direction, the municipalities are responsible for the reality, and our role is to put it into practice today.
If you would like to see how this could work in practice for your municipality, please feel free to contact us and we will arrange a meeting or demo.
