In DigitalWell Arena's new demand accelerator, Karlstad municipality has a key role. In the work to create a needs-driven development of digital welfare services, Karlstad is becoming a pioneer.
As a project partner, Karlstad provides personal resources in areas such as law, procurement and service development, which can benefit the companies. Of course, the municipality's own needs and challenges are also central to the involvement in the demand accelerator.
The basis of the demand accelerator is to identify real needs in the public sector, which can act as a growth engine for the development of digital welfare services together with innovative companies. In the needs-driven cases that the demand accelerator drives, companies and the public sector will be offered support to jointly develop, test and evaluate solutions.
Better support for companies
- At the health and care administration, we have successfully tried to be knowledge support for companies that want to develop digital services. The cooperation we believe will be possible through the project of developing a demand accelerator will be an extension of this. We hope that we can become even better at contributing to companies being able to develop products and services based on our target groups' needs for support and help. The requirements we set can support the company in its development, and the knowledge we can gain in how we can develop our requirements can contribute to us both becoming better clients and being able to work more efficiently, says Marie Johansson, head of development at care and the care administration in Karlstad municipality.
She believes that the most important thing is that collaboration can give more companies the opportunity to develop products and services that will benefit the people of Karlstad. If they can also be made available on the consumer market, it means that the opportunities for Karlstad residents to be independent increases, which would be very positive.
Support for increased independence
In addition to the fact that new welfare technology can improve the service to the municipality's residents, there is also at bottom a challenge to get the public's resources to be sufficient in the future.
- We know that the public sector must adjust and broaden the range and options of service to citizens. It will be difficult to recruit new employees in the long run, simply because of what the population pyramid will look like. Welfare technology and digital services can complement and enrich the public sector's service to citizens. We also know that many people who need support and help want to manage on their own, to be as independent as possible. We can offer that to some extent today, but we need more and new welfare technology products and digital services, so that we can adapt our service where necessary, says Marie Johansson.
Get help finding existing solutions
Thomas Wernerheim, together with Ann-Sophie Gustafsson, will participate as development manager for Karlstad Municipality in the project. According to him, to some extent, structures are also lacking to oversee existing solutions for the municipality's needs. Here, the demand accelerator's preparation phase and monitoring of the environment can fulfill an important function alongside the development of new services.
- There is a lack of a megaphone to reach out in this ecosystem. It may be that there are already solutions, but now a lot is based on our informal structures and contacts so we have a hard time finding them. It's about optimizing the satisfaction of needs and creating as much value as possible for our users, says Thomas Wernerheim.
