Last week Kinda Municipality launched Kommun-Kim as its digital employee. The municipality sees this as a natural step forward in its digitalisation journey, which focuses on creating value for its citizens. In this interview, Malin Forsberg, Head of Information and Marketing for Kinda Municipality, talks about how Kommun-Kim has been received internally and their continued investment in digitalisation.
How did the municipality first come into contact with Softronic and Kommun-Kim?
“We came into contact with Kommun-Kim through a seminar that one of our employees attended.”
Can you tell us the reasons why you wanted to hire Kommun-Kim, the municipality’s new digital employee?
“It felt like a natural step forward in our digitalisation journey, which focuses on creating value for our citizens. We see this a service to our citizens and the other visitors to our website, as Kommun-Kim can be their first contact with the municipality.”
How has Kommun-Kim been received internally in the municipality? What kind of reactions have there been?
“Everyone has found it really enjoyable and Kommun-Kim has been asked many interesting questions during our internal tests, including whether they are married! Apart from this, we’ve seen clear benefits and it’s been a way of making sure that the information on our website is the information that the citizens are asking for.”
What is your goal with Kommun-Kim?
“The reason we hired Kommun-Kim was to improve the help we give our citizens and to allow them to interact with the municipality outside office hours as well. We believe that Kommun-Kim can answer questions that we would otherwise have received by email. It is a win-win situation, with citizens receiving answers directly, while we’re saving time that we can use on other administration.”
How do you think Kommun-Kim can help improve the service to your citizens and develop your operations?
“The main thing is that our citizens are able to interact with the municipality outside normal working hours. It’s a good complement to the search function on our website and can give us information about how our citizens search and what they are looking for. It also means that we can check that the information on our website is what the citizens want to read.”
How do you work with digitalisation and development in your municipality? What strategy do you have? Do you have any more exciting projects underway?
“We’ve just decided on a digitalisation strategy, so we’re currently reviewing our processes to see what could be automated (RPA). When we decided to present Kommun-Kim on our website, we also updated our layout to make it as accessible as possible.”