The Municipalities of Sotenäs, Munkedal and Lysekil revolutionize citizen services in Sweden with Microsoft Power Platform

“This initiative has taught us that nothing is impossible. Whatever looks impossible just takes a little more time to achieve.” 

Johan Christensson, IT Solutions Architect at SML-IT, is discussing citizen development and innovation at his organization – and the solution that’s making it possible. 

“At SML-IT, we believe that technology is crucial to unlock business development, as well as drive innovation and automation,” says Christensson. “But most of all, we see digitalization as key to empowering our community and supporting our people in whatever way they need it.”

But this hasn’t always been possible for SML-IT, an organization responsible for providing IT services to the Swedish municipalities of Sotenäs, Munkedal and Lysekil. "Being a small public sector organization, our resources are often limited,” he explains. "This makes it tough to be digitally independent.”

Over the past decade, the organization has found the answer to this challenge in the Microsoft Cloud and low-code/no-code technology. Implemented as part of a digital transformation initiative spanning an entire decade, the solutions are bringing much needed flexibility and independence to the organization – giving it the power and capabilities necessary to support its citizens while optimizing resources. 

“For years, we had to rely on providers who wouldn’t see our ambitions as feasible, saying they were impossible,” says he. “But that mindset always left us dissatisfied and wanting more. 

“Now, we can take technology into our own hands – and use it to make possible what others deem impossible. Doing so much more, with less.”

Ten years of digital transformation

Sotenäs, Munkedal and Lysekil are smaller municipalities on the north-western coast of Sweden, known as vacation spots for Swedes and foreign tourists alike. Their joint IT function, SMT-IT, was established in 2012 with the goal of creating a common infrastructure to support civil servants in the area with digital devices and services. 

A decade or so later, the organization now reaches some 10,500 users, including council members and people operating in the education sector. 

"Our municipalities may well be similar in size and geographical location, but they also have different structures, sets of users and managers, priorities and needs,” says Anders Siljeholm, Head of IT at SML-IT. 

“Our job is to sit down with each of them, understand how we can help them – both individually and collectively – and find the right solutions for their needs.”

This, he says, has been a Microsoft prerogative since the early days of SML-IT. “We are such a small entity that we cannot code ourselves, our server halls aren’t secure or big enough to store our data and we can’t often buy products from outside,” he explains. 

"So we need a platform that does most of the work for us – allowing us to create apps and programs with the flexibility necessary to make adaptations for our various users.

“For us, that started with M365 and continued with Power Platform.” 

Exploring new avenues with low-code and no-code technology

First implemented in 2018, Power Platform has been a transformational addition for SML-IT and its infrastructure, bringing much-needed automation and optimization to its most crucial processes. 

“The Power Platform suite has opened up a new world of possibilities for us,” says Johan Christensson. “All of a sudden, we were able to create a wealth of simple, effective apps for various different purposes, all on our own.” 

A prime example is SML-IT's e-commerce platform. Created in partnership with local provider Visma Proceedo, this is an invoicing system that allows municipality members to purchase various items – from schoolbooks to laptops, digital devices and more. 

“Our end users can access the platform to search for products and place orders that land directly into our approval system,” says Christensson. “We are then tasked to document these orders, approve their release and check that everything is correct.”

Most of this procedure has now been automated using Power Automate and Dynamics 365 Customer Service, which oversee processes without human intervention.

“We’ve handled roughly 1,200 orders in total since July 2020,” he continues. “Thanks to this streamlined, semi-automated process, we gain about 15-20 minutes per order to spend on creating value for our end-users rather than on more administrative tasks.” 

Paving way for a new data model

Building on the learnings and insights that they’re getting from Power Apps and Automate, SML-IT is now looking to build its own data model using Power BI and Dataverse. 

“The Power Platform suite has opened our eyes when it comes to automation, showing us the key role it can play for us,” explains Christensson. “We’ve realized that if we put information at the center of all our processes, we gain precious knowledge on how things work within our systems, and we can make decisions based on that information.”

To this end, the organization is now producing data reports to anticipate and meet the needs of the municipalities. Such data is stored, in a newly standardized way, in SharePoint and the Dataverse.  

“Previously, we had so many different versions of the information that we drilled,” he continues. “Each of us technicians could claim to have their own version of the truth. 

“Thanks to Power Platform, we have now embraced a data-driven, information-centric mindset that allows us to see and elaborate things in a more centralized, cohesive way.”

Adding in more and more bricks

After nearly ten years working with Microsoft, SML-IT has become a prominent advocate of cloud and technology adoption in the Swedish public sector. 

"It feels like we now have some kind of bag of tools that we can pick up and put together, depending on our needs,” says Anders Siljeholm. “It's like Lego bricks: you can add, remove, change and tweak to achieve different results.”

He explains that initial skepticism of the initiative – at both board and citizen levels – has been replaced by interest and trust across the three municipalities. “Our politicians are finally understanding that this project is about information, not just technology,” he says. “It's about driving innovation and business development that helps our communities.”

As they look to expand their Microsoft journey to Azure DevOps, other Power BI uses and more, SNL-IT is seeing first-hand just how beneficial its digital transformation is for the community. 

“A person that works at one of the school administrations recently asked us if we had a specific license for Power BI and if we could use it with a third-party program,” he says. "That for us was clear proof that what we’re doing is really starting to reach everyone.”

He adds that this is just the beginning for SML-IT. “We now have a platform that is secure, easy to use and that allows us to develop our own solutions,” he concludes. 

“With the data that we gather from it, we can now start building on those foundations even more, keeping in mind what we’ve already created and working out ways to constantly improve it.”