Welfare Technology Tool Box 1 PROJECT: Connect – Collecting Nordic Best Practice Within Welfare Technology CONNECT Published by Nordic Welfare Centre Project Manager: Dennis C Søndergaard Author: Dennis C Søndergaard Responsible publisher: Ewa Persson Göransson Graphic design: Idermark & Lagerwall Reklam AB ISBN: 978-91-88213-16-7 Nordic Welfare Centre Box 1073, SE-101 39 Stockholm Visiting address: Drottninggatan 30 Phone: +46 8 545 536 00 [email protected] Nordic Welfare Centre c/o Institutet för hälsa och välfärd PB 30, FI-00271 Helsingfors Visiting address: Mannerheimsvägen 168 B Phone: +358 20 741 08 80 The report can be requested in printed format or be downloaded from www.nordicwelfare.org 2 Content Foreword ................................................................................................................................................ 5 Background ............................................................................................................................................ 6 Methodology and approach ................................................................................................................. 8 Introducing the process and toolbox ................................................................................................. 11 Step 1: Vision ........................................................................................................................................13 Step 2: Strategy ...................................................................................................................................19 Step 3: Communication plan ............................................................................................................. 25 Step 4: Needs analysis ........................................................................................................................31 Step 5: Market screening ................................................................................................................... 37 Step 6: Evaluation model ................................................................................................................... 43 Step 7: Procurement model ............................................................................................................... 49 Step 8: Implementation model .......................................................................................................... 55 Step 9: Effect-monitoring .................................................................................................................. 63 Reference list ....................................................................................................................................... 69 3 4 Foreword Welfare technology has increasingly been on Yet the toolbox is not just the advice given by both the political and media agenda during the experts, but is also based on practical expe- last five to seven years. Yet despite this great rience and municipal ”best practice”, as it is interest and intensive hype, perhaps not as created by ten of the Nordic region’s leading many new solutions have been implemented municipalities in the welfare technology area, as might have been expected. The over 1,200 in cooperation with a number of national au- Nordic municipalities have faced challenges in thorities. transforming interest and projects into imple- mented solutions and innovative new everyday Nordic Welfare Centre hopes that this pub- lives for staff and citizens. lication and this toolbox can help to promote welfare technology initiatives in the respective This publication, and the CONNECT project countries, and also to promote cooperation overall, addresses some of the problems faced across national borders in the Nordic region. by the Nordic municipalities in their work with welfare technology: How can we capitalise We hope that you will find both the toolbox more on our projects? How do we ensure that and the publication useful. the knowledge we gather is integrated in the municipal organisation? How can we become better at sharing our knowledge and experi- Enjoy your reading! ence, rather than thinking that we each need to reinvent the wheel? How can we strengthen the joint Nordic market for welfare technolo- gy? How do we ensure that staff see technolo- gy as a co-player? The issues to be tackled are numerous and complicated. CONNECT gath- Ewa Persson-Göransson ers these threads to create the first complete Nordic toolbox for how municipalities can work Director with welfare technology on the best possible Nordic Welfare Centre basis. 5 Background The CONNECT project is conceived for and and social affairs who already had placed wel- funded by a special program overseen by The fare technology as a high priority. Nordic Council of Ministers, called “Sustaina- ble Nordic Welfare”. This program was initi- The task for NVC was to design and complete a ated to ensure the long term sustainability of project that strengthened the general compe- the Nordic welfare model. The Nordic model tence level and implementation power within has received increasing international interest welfare technology in the public sector in all of for its ability to create both high quality social the five Nordic countries. welfare and economic growth, but future demographic and economic challenges, facing Within this framework, NVC chose to design both the Nordic region and most of the west- a project directed at the over 1200 municipal- ern world, threaten its continued success. The ities in the Nordic region. Municipalities are the program “Sustainable Nordic Welfare” was main service providers within the Nordic wel- designed to address some of these challenges fare model and they are also the sector level with a special focus on healthcare, the labour most directly involved in working with welfare market, and education. technology today – so a project with munici- palities as the main target group would have As the Scandinavian term “welfare technol- the greatest impact. ogy” had gained considerable momentum as a new tool to innovate public healthcare in all From here NVC looked at the municipal chal- five Nordic countries, “Sustainable Nordic Wel- lenges when working with welfare technology fare” was looking for a project within welfare – Are they similar across the Nordic borders? technology in the program. The task fell to the Are we facing the same problems? – in short, Nordic Welfare Center, NVC, an institution does it even make sense to cooperate at a Nor- under the authority of the Nordic Council of dic level within this field? Ministers, working with issues within health 6 The answer was a resounding ‘yes’. It turns out, already done. Too many municipalities that in spite of obvious differences in develop- tend to think that they are unique – their ment, marked strength, and competence level citizens are unique, their organization is across the Nordic region, we all seem to be unique, etc. This means that whatever oth- facing the same basic problems when trying ers have done before, simply does not apply to work with welfare technology. These main to them. This “not invented here” thinking issues are: produces too many similar projects, which wastes valuable resources. • Too many projects with too little end-prod- uct: A common Nordic problem. Municipal- • Weak common Nordic market: Surprisingly ities love projects, for various reasons, but the common Nordic market for welfare unfortunately they remain projects and are technology is fragmented. The Danish pub- often run as something extra and not as lic sector prefers to buy from Danish sup- an embedded part of the actual, everyday pliers, Swedish from Swedish etc. This does service delivery. This means that the knowl- not apply to traditional assistive technol- edge obtained in the projects remains ogy, but as soon as something becomes within the projects and is never integrated digital the markets weaken. This remains a into the wider organization. This results in barrier, naturally more so for the weakest municipalities jumping from project to pro- of the Nordic markets. ject with very little actual implementation or end-product. Overcoming these challenges and raising the knowledge and awareness regarding welfare • We are all unique: We are still not good technology at a municipal level would prove a enough at sharing knowledge and experi- significant boost for welfare technology in the ences – acknowledging what others have five Nordic countries. 7 Methodology and approach The idea to counter the aforementioned chal- becomes an implemented solution. lenges was to first create the optimal process • Helping suppliers. Although indirectly, for working with welfare technology. For each having a common Nordic frame will help step in this process, we would create a best suppliers sell across the Nordic borders. If practice tool kit. This would give everyone easy we use the same framework, we will ask access to best practice knowledge and it would the same questions making it easier for help municipalities gain a structured approach suppliers. to working with this area. To understand more about the process and The connect process and toolbox aims to: toolkit see the section: Explaining the CON- NECT process. • Provide knowledge and experience. Hopefully having a validated Nordic tool- It was important for CONNECT that both the box would help raise the general compe- process and the toolkit were formed via a bot- tence level, as knowledge is gathered and tom-up