Three municipalities become one

Three municipalities in western Norway, Fjell, Sund and Øygarden, will merge into one and be called Nye Øygarden Kommune. How can we use this as an opportunity to design new ways of working together to serve citizens better? EGGS will be teaming up with the municipalities to create the ideal model. Services for vulnerable children and teenagers is the starting point.

Cooperation and co-creation are crucial

One of the biggest challenges the project faces is in the coordination and cooperation across the municipalities, as well as the different service sectors of health, employment and education. And that’s where EGGS comes in. Together with StimuLab, and administered by Difi and DOGA, we contributed with service design. The project will apply user insights and conduct experiments to find the best solution for the new municipality’s citizens.

Joining three municipalities requires a large amount of coordination and cooperation to succeed. Both between the municipalities but also across sectors and areas of responsibility.

Insights through experiments

Vulnerable children and teenagers require high quality and coordinated services to avoid the pain of bureaucracy. They demand effective collaboration and excellent communication. The snag is understanding how to go about that. What’s called for is a model that offers quality services that are consistent and equal, yet flexible enough to meet citizen’s needs when they arise. By creating design experiments for the municipality, we can test different hypothesis and gather insights from things that have failed to find new ways of working together – methods prompting solutions that are of maximum benefit to all.

Teenagers and children are a vulnerable part of the population and therefore it’s extra important that public services for them are well-coordinated and of high quality. This requires effective communication, collaboration, consistency and flexibility.

The way forward

We have now start testing stuff out with a diverse group of experts, various employees and citizens, who’ve prepared a series of experiments to be carried out up until summer 2019. We’ll use the insights we gain from these experiments to map out whatever challenges there are and then formalize projects, working with what’s most important. The project is set to run until January next year when the three municipalities officially become one.