Tønsberg Municipality

important criteria were flexibility, dynamism and integration with existing systems. The price was obviously also a factor that came into play.

"Flexibility and dynamism for us, means that the supplier responds quickly to our requests and is willing to make adjustments based on our needs",
says Information Manager Jan Petter Bergan

The requirements for the solution was that the sites should achieve 5 stars on Norge.no 's evaluation of the availability test, ie, how accessible is the solution for people with e.g hearing- and/or vision impairities

As one of just 155 public sites www.tonsberg.kommune.no/ achieved 5 stars in the fall of 2010, and became the best of the cities in Vestfold. Another requirement was the integration with various existing systems, some of them very local-specific and a little "quirky."

It was highly important that users would not have to deal with many different systems, multiple sign-ins every day to jump between the various systems, and inertia in the system because not all the systems came from the same supplier.


The entire system, the interaction between the underlying document management systems and the Web-publishing section, must be experienced as uniform, and without significant delays. A stable solution that can handle many simultaneous remote users is taken for granted.

"We found that Symfoni was always keen to find the best solution for users. New technical solutions were developed rapidly, even when we could come with new ideas and suggestions quite often", says Information Manager Jan Petter Bergan

So far the only municipality, Tønsberg has chosen to publish political decisions on their web-pages. Case-files for the City Council are usually authored in  Akos ( a municipality specific system), while the minutes-of-meetings and decisions is stored in another document management system.

Both are published to the web page by only one touch, often within minutes after the City Council is adjourned . This means that the individual citizen with very few clicks can read about the decisions politicians take on the citizens' behalf.

This, together with access to information on municipal services and prices, helped to give Tønsberg, as one of only eight municipalities, full score in the Consumer Council's major survey of Internet use for Norwegian municipalities.
The web sites of Tønsberg municipality has over 3,000 unique external users every day, and more than 160,000 page hits every week. Many exhibit great loyalty to the sides - which shows that they have succeeded in their project.

A new chat module - online chat with the Service Department - was launched in the fall of 2010.

"We did not want one of those IKEA-lady functions (automated response), but rather that citizens can talk to a real person when they contact us on this channel "

"With Symfoni you will not be forgotten", says Bergan, and puts great emphasis on the continuous follow-up from Sympfoni as a supplier. The annual user forum is also mentioned as an important and relatively unique opportunity to influence the direction for future solutions.