A smarter process for urban planning and building
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The road to the goal may seem long and crooked. To facilitate route selection, a roadmap is described here as support for all actors. The roadmap consists of four steps. An organization can work with all four steps at the same time, but full exchange on the later steps can not be achieved until the first steps are completed in full.
Read more about the four steps in the roadmap
Since data is the driving force in the transformation that digitalisation entails, it is important that the information for the process is digitized, accessible and useful. In other words, we must become much better at collecting and structuring our information digitally in order to be able to make full use of the possibilities of digitalisation. Data owners and information managers are becoming increasingly important roles.
Following standards is obvious because it simplifies for all actors to retrieve and interpret the information. Metadata, ie information about data, is central and all producers need to be able to describe their data with metadata. Data also changes during the process, we therefore need to handle data in several versions.
In the community building process, there is still information that is not digitized. Information that is available as pdf files is admittedly digital, but since the pdf file can not be reused in any other way than to be read by a human, it is not enough to build a digital process.
If the digital information is not reliable, or difficult to access and difficult to manage, it does not contribute to an efficient process. In the worst case, this can lead to a decision being made without the necessary basis, or an incorrect basis.
For many amounts of information in community building, standards are still lacking, but work is underway to develop standards.
A digital workflow must allow information to flow digitally in the process and can be easily reused in the various steps of the process. Actors in the process will need to coordinate to harmonize workflows. When there is consensus and transparency in the various parts of the process, more actors can participate and contribute to a good result. It is also necessary that the actors, as far as possible, use the national services that exist for eg e-archiving, e-signing.
Responsibilities and roles need to be clarified. We need to differentiate between responsibility for the process and responsibility for the information. In the community building process, the National Board of Housing, Building and Planning has the overall responsibility for the process and Lantmäteriet for the national infrastructure for the information. The two authorities work together so that process and information can work together. The municipalities' responsibility is the municipal processes and to ensure that these harmonize with national guidelines. The municipalities are also responsible for ensuring that information created in the municipality's operations follows standards and is made available to other actors.
A digital workflow will never be efficient if the information does not meet the requirements for quality, usability and availability. It is therefore important to understand that step 1 in the Roadmap Digitizing the information is a prerequisite for the workflow to be able to become digital.
Digital dialogue does not only mean communication with citizens in connection with case processing, it also includes other communication such as surveys, citizen dialogue, digital meetings, chats, social media etc. It is about effectively explaining the municipality's activities and the decisions that are made, and at the same time giving citizens the opportunity to influence by submitting comments and suggestions. Digital dialogue becomes natural and necessary when the information and workflow is digital. The dialogue is faster and the information more complete and easier to use and understand.
Today's citizens are used to sharing information, sharing information and commenting online. The channels are many and citizens expect the municipality and authority to be available. It is also not reasonable for a citizen to have to travel several miles to take part in an exhibition or meet an administrator when the dialogue could take place digitally on the citizen's terms. The municipality and authority can, for example, use My messages for mailings and e-services so that the citizen can follow their errands.
That both information and process are digital and standardized is a prerequisite for smart tools for dialogue to be developed. It is therefore at least as important to work with steps 1 and 2 in the roadmap for the dialogue to be effective, comprehensible and digital.
Automation can mean anything from having a software regularly search for new cases in a case management system and creating notifications that something new has been received, to handling all or parts of a case processing, to finally making a decision and closing the case. Automation needs to be implemented in small steps and primarily for simpler routine matters. The advantages are that all cases are handled equally, processing times are shortened and the need for monitoring and staffing is reduced.
Automation will require legal development, but much can be done today. Building permits are an area where there are already elements of automation. Automation has a major impact on our processes and routines. Tasks will change and may disappear at the same time as new tasks are added.
Automation is only possible when data, regulations and processes are so unambiguous that they can be handled with algorithms for automation. To be able to succeed with automation, you must therefore work with the previous steps in the Roadmap.