Karlstad University (associated partner)

Karlstad, Sweden
www.kau.se

Karlstad University - the modern university - is one of the youngest universities in Sweden. With 12,000 students in 50 disciplines offering 900 courses we have already attained a significant level of academic achievement with openness, creativity and multidisciplinarity. We see it as our role to challenge the established and investigate the unknown. It is our ambition to contribute to the development of knowledge both at the international, regional and individual level, and to be an active and important link in the Swedish system of higher education while maintaining our strong regional focus and international outlook. Underpinning all our teaching and research is a close dialogue with private companies and public organizations. We can thus offer one of the most inspirational university environments in the country.

Karlstad University brings a range of expertise to the Smart Cities project, including business and service development, process improvement and employee and customer involvement. Karlstad University is working with Karlstad municipality to produce a goal analysis that reviews e-service development on national, municipality and SmartCities project levels. This analysis can be used as a tool for structured and result-oriented work for management and employees to use when presenting arguments for use of e-services, to identify relevant actions to perform in e-service development, to communicate the same information about e-services in different channels, and to prioritize and evaluate e-service developments.

Karlstad University is also supporting transnational work to develop a common process model for e-services, which will be used as a knowledge base for business development projects. A common process model is a first step in creating a platform that sets out how to think, describe and work towards process and quality improvements in e-services. This model will help employees to be more effective by working uniformly in and between administrations/organisations by using a common language, concepts and values. The process model is a “living model” that is maintained and continually updated by the e-office in Karlstad municipality, and which is based on research, standard praxis and experiences from the use of the model.

Karlstad University is also reviewing accessibility standards for municipal websites, developing indicators and measurement tools for services and processes, and sharing expertise in the use of personas as a means of helping to target the delivery of services to different customer groups.