How digitization simplifies work at a municipality: a look behind the scenes

7.30 a.m.: Finding documents made easy  

Stefan Schmidt arrives at the municipality building. He starts up his PC and, after logging in to the system, checks his e-mails – he is already benefiting from e-government, as he saves paper and time by using e-mail. This is because he does not have print them out or file them in ring binders. Salgesch has now replaced paper with PDFs, which can be sent, edited and archived digitally with ease. Schmidt also saves scans of his physical inbox documents in the archive software. 

All authorized employees and the municipal council have round-the-clock access to the digital archive, even when working from home. “All data is now stored centrally and easy to find at any time, and sending documents back and forth multiple times is a thing of the past,” says Schmidt.

10 a.m.: Gathering data with just a few clicks 

A query from the cantonal tax office pops up in Schmidt’s e-mail inbox. The authorities are requesting certain information about individual Salgesch citizens. With just a few mouse clicks, Schmidt gathers the relevant data and generates a clearly structured list with all the required information. He sends these by secure e-mail. “This means that the printer stays in standby mode,” explains the municipal clerk. 

1 p.m.: Twice as fast as before 

After lunch, Schmidt draws up the agenda for the next meeting of the municipal council. He can select the individual agenda items and the documents stored for them easily in the minutes management program. He presses “Ctrl + C” followed by “Ctrl + V”, and the list is created. He doesn’t have to write anything himself. “I’m now twice as fast as I used to be,” says the municipal clerk of the improved efficiency in his agenda creation work. 

3 p.m.: Purely digital audits 

The next task is to check various municipal invoices. Schmidt needs the signatures of three people, including the mayor. It is the mayor who carries out the final check – nothing is paid out or debited until that happens. Today, audits are exclusively digital. “The cost is around 20 percent of what it was previously,” says Schmidt.  

4.30 p.m.: Always up to date 

In his final official act before leaving work, Stefan Schmidt “clocks off” digitally. He enters his working hours for the day in the web-based time management tool. As a general rule, all work steps are recorded digitally. The advantage of this is that if someone is absent due to illness or hands over an assignment to a colleague, everyone involved is always up to date.  

Less time, less paper consumption, greater flexibility and transparency: digitization has changed Stefan Schmidt’s day-to-day work to his advantage. His conclusion after two years: “Our digital transformation has paid off 100 percent.”