Due to the new Local Government Act, it is no longer possible to operate as a §27 entity. As a result, the owner municipalities have undertaken an extensive process to select a new organizational form for Hedmark IKT. The chosen structure is an “Intermunicipal Company with an Administrative Board.” This process has led to significant changes, both internally and externally. The municipalities have adopted a new company agreement, cooperation agreement, strategic platform, and new organization for the IT collaboration. In light of these major changes, the board also decided to adopt a new name, logo, and profile. The new name is Indigo IKT IKS. Through this new name and profile, the municipal directors aim to mark the beginning of a new era of collaboration, emphasizing expanded cooperation in development, innovation, and digitalization.
In this article, you can read more about these changes and how they will affect your daily work.
Cooperation Agreement
The digitalization of public services will require significant investments in the coming years. This, in turn, demands competence, resource availability, focus, and financial strength—resources that few municipalities possess individually and even fewer can attract and retain over time.
A significant portion of the investments tied to increased digitalization involves costs that are independent of a municipality’s size. In other words, being small in a digital world is challenging. National recommendations to Norwegian municipalities are clear: You must collaborate on IT and digitalization to address your needs in these areas effectively.
Closer collaboration on digitalization will improve service quality, enhance security, and reduce costs per municipality compared to tackling these challenges individually.
The municipal directors involved in the IT collaboration believe that strong consolidation provides the best balance in achieving the cooperation’s goals. By further developing Indigo IKT as a center of excellence for IT operations, management, development, and digitalization, the municipalities will be better positioned to face these challenges collectively.
This means the IT collaboration as a whole becomes more critical for the participants. Indigo IKT, as the municipalities’ joint IT company, must take on a larger role in offering services, expertise, and capacity across almost the entire spectrum of IT-related needs. This approach will deliver the greatest savings and benefits while providing each municipality with more development and digitalization expertise than would be realistic individually. To achieve this, municipalities must gradually centralize more capacity and expertise within the shared collaboration instead of maintaining municipality-specific roles.
Increased collaboration also entails that municipalities within the IT partnership must work more closely in further developing existing systems and procuring new ones. This is essential for successfully digitalizing municipal citizen services.
A new Cooperation Agreement has been developed to reflect these changes. Cooperation requires commitment, but together we are strong!
Organization
With the transition to the new organizational structure, the organizational model will also change. Adjustments have been made to better reflect the needs of the municipalities and align with the new cooperation agreement.
The new organization will feature a governance model comprising an administrative board, a board of directors, and a managing director. Following this, a collaboration model for the Indigo partnership will include key bodies such as a portfolio council, a joint IT and security forum, and four sector forums covering education, health, society, and HR/finance.
Profile
Our new visual identity is built around the name Indigo. «Indigo» stems from the phrase «Innovative and Digitalizing Organization.»
You can view our complete visual identity in our design manual.
Efforts are underway to implement the new profile across all digital platforms, which will take some time to fully integrate.
What does this change mean for me as an employee?
Stronger collaboration and a new organizational model mean better and more secure solutions. These changes will hopefully have a positive impact on employees. In practical terms, this change means you will see and hear the names «Indigo» and «Indigo IKT» in the places where you usually see and hear «HIKT» and «Hedmark IKT.»
We look forward to the future and are excited to face it together with you!