The new digital everyday life in Esbjerg Municipality

As the country's 6th largest municipality, there are many meetings - and thus also agendas and meeting minutes to keep track of. That's why Esbjerg Municipality decided back in 2012 to replace the physical paper piles with the digital meeting tool, FirstAgenda Prepare - a choice they are happy to have made.

In the spring of 2012, Esbjerg Municipality faced a challenge with the handling of large amounts of physical paperwork for meeting preparation in the municipality's city council. Therefore, a specific request for digitization of meeting preparation was brought to the table by the city council and the executive board, and according to Lene Aggerholm Foverskov, digitization consultant at Esbjerg Municipality, this was the starting point for the implementation of FirstAgenda Prepare .   

"We started in 2012, and it came as a request from the city council and the executive board to digitize agendas, because there were huge amounts of physical paper in circulation. At the same time, there was also a desire to digitize the various formal meetings."

While the implementation of new digital tools in a municipality as large as Esbjerg can cause concern, it was a surprisingly easy and smooth implementation. Esbjerg Municipality initiated an overlap period where the paper format was still available, but the digital format quickly became the new normal in Esbjerg

"It was very well received here in the municipality, and both the administrative staff and the politicians quickly got used to having all their meeting material and preparation on one digital platform, and it was actually surprisingly quick to phase out the paper format". 

The tool was also well received by the agenda collectors, who spend a large part of their time preparing in FirstAgenda Prepare . Here, it is especially the user-friendliness and simplicity of the solution that made it easy to use, explains Nadia Nielsen, who is an agenda collector in a number of committees in Esbjerg Municipality
 

"It's both simple and user-friendly - and that's regardless of age and IT skills. It's easy to gather the different agendas and meeting materials, and you have a full overview of the different meeting participants and can release the agenda with just a few clicks."

- Nadia Nielsen, Agenda collector

Agnieszka Jankowski, who is also an agenda collector in a number of committees, recognizes the user-friendliness of the solution. At the same time, she is happy to have everything in one place and to be able to easily send out changes - either with or without notification

"It's easy and clear - both for us as agenda collectors, but also for the meeting participants, who always know that they can find the meeting material in one place. It's also easy for us as agenda compilers when we need to make major or minor changes to the agenda. We simply update the material in FirstAgenda Prepare and then we can choose whether we want to notify the meeting participants that changes have been made to the meeting material."  

Easy training with e-learning courses

In connection with the start-up and training in FirstAgenda Prepare - and later FirstAgenda Management , Esbjerg Municipality also used FirstAgenda's e-learning courses as a supplement to their physical training. The e-learning courses were divided into different modules, which according to Yovana Hinrichsen, system manager for Prepare in Esbjerg Municipality, has been a good experience

"It worked flawlessly. The e-learning courses are divided into different modules that are adapted to the different roles of administrator, agenda collector and meeting participant. Here, users simply log in with their municipality login and can then sign up for the courses they need to take. This way, they can supplement the physical training with online courses at their own pace." 

High level of security and support

When working with the preparation, organization and post-processing of meetings in a municipality, there are certain security standards that must be adhered to. When it comes to security, Nadia Nielsen is pleased that with FirstAgenda Prepare , they have everything gathered on a secure platform

"In the committees where I prepare agendas, there are often some last-minute additions or changes. It's nice that I don't have to send out emails with the meeting material, as you can never be sure where it will end up"

- Nadia Nielsen, Agenda collector

In addition to the high level of security, Nadia also feels that they are met with a high level of technical support. 

"In general, I feel that we are met with fast and helpful support whether we contact them by phone or email. They know how dependent we are on the system, so they don't let us go until the problem is solved, which gives us peace of mind." 

Yovana has the same experience. Overall, Esbjerg Municipality has conducted more than 10,000 meetings since implementing FirstAgenda Prepare as their primary meeting tool, and Yovana has nothing but praise for the collaboration with FirstAgenda

"We generally have a very good and pleasant collaboration with FirstAgenda. The solution is generally extremely reliable and it is very rare that we experience challenges. Should we encounter any challenges, we know that support is ready to help us at the other end, and we are very happy about that."