Digital bridge

The municipality of Östersund has come a long way in digital development with projects in, for example, digital twin and digital overview plan. This project will form a bridge to move forward in the digitization process.

The aim is to develop and streamline the building process by integrating digital development plan information with the municipality´s e-service for building permits. this would enable citizens and case handlers to have access to interactive systems that streamlines the building permit process.

This lays the foundation for future possibilities with 3D models and automation of the permit process as well as a variety of other services based on this information.

Development planning is one of the most fundamental parts of the community building process where the municipality regulates the use of land and water.

All the municipality´s detailed plans are currently stored in analogue archives and made available as images via the website.

The information in the detailed plans is used in several stages during the building process but is primarily used in the building permit stage.

Since 2018, the municipality launched a digital e-service for building permits where citizens and companies can submit their documents.

The building permit officers then check the documents manually against the regulations of the development plan.In the municipality, there are roughly 800 development plans, of which the oldest are from the 1920s.

Older development plans are often difficult to decipher as their regulations, descriptions and appearance differ from the ones today.

Interpreting the regulations in such plans takes a long time during the building permit process and despite the e-service for building permits, the citizen must still order map documents, draw the building, and submit it to the e-service. In some cases, the drawings also need to be supplemented and then the process is repeated.

This lengthens and makes the process to get a positive building permit decision more expensive.By connecting digital development plan information with the e-service for building permits, there is the potential for citizens and companies to draw their intended measures directly in the service.

The drawing is then automatically checked against the underlying information and generates decisions.Today, approximately 25 percent of the municipality´s existing development plans have been digitized and interpreted as a part of the municipality’s digitalization initiative.

This project will form the next phase of the project, which is to publish the plans in the municipality´s internal web map and test and evaluate them in the building permit stage.By creating a bridge between digital development plan information and the e-service for building permits, the municipality can develop, streamline, and increase the quality of building permit processing by, among other things:Increased legal certainty as all planning regulations are uniformly interpretedBuilding permit officers receive all planning information integrated into the processing systemThat citizens are given a greater opportunity to submit development plan-compliant building permit drawingsThat citizens are offered to create their own drawings directly in the e-service for building permitsAutomation of simple building permit mattersDigital plan information has the potential to be used by all actors in the civil engineering sector, but the greatest benefit is in the building permit process.

Providing an open service with development planning information, gives citizens and other actors a better understanding of which regulations apply in a specific location, which leads to a more equal distribution of knowledge between the municipality and individual actors.The development planning process also benefits from the information.

In addition to quick access to uniform plan information, they can make analyses of regulations at both neighbourhood and municipal level, which can be used in new development pl