Municipalities handle highly sensitive information in their systems – not least personal data – which, from a GDPR perspective and in relation to legislation on the disclosure of information and the protection of confidential information, must be handled and stored using solutions that are subject to Swedish and European data legislation.
With 85,000 citizens and more than 8,000 employees, Kungsbacka Municipality is working hard to improve public services through digitalization. An essential element in creating efficient digital services and flows internally within the Municipality and towards citizens is to enable systems to communicate with each other through integration. The cloud platform that hosts the service is a critical component since integration almost always involves linking several different systems.
The Municipality decided to standardize its integration efforts just over a year ago on the cloud-based Frends integration platform from HiQ.
Frends was the integration platform that best met our functionality requirements from the outset
Jonas Sjömark
First among Swedish municipalities
In early spring 2022, Kungsbacka Municipality was one of the first in the Swedish public sector to move to Frends in Compliant Cloud, Cleura’s cloud with integrated regulatory compliance.
“Functionality has improved even more now that we can run Frends via Cleura’s regulatory cloud platform,” explains Jonas.
Legal discussions previously part of everyday work
“Before Frends offered the service via Cleura’s cloud, we had access through Microsoft Azure. There were often legal discussions – essentially for every integration – that concerned the type of data we could integrate without risking the transfer of data to a third country, which would have been a criminal offense for us,” continues Jonas.
The legal ambiguity experienced by Kungsbacka Municipality meant integration work was sometimes not as quick and easy as actually was allowed by the integration platform. For the same reason, the Municipality was sometimes prevented from performing integration that would offer societal benefits and streamline internal processing times. ‘
As a municipality, it was naturally of the utmost importance to protect our citizens’ information and ensure that sensitive information was not transferred to a third country.
Jonas Sjömark
“As a municipality, it was naturally of the utmost importance to protect our citizens’ information and ensure that sensitive information was not transferred to a third country. Therefore, we are very satisfied that we can now use the Frends flexible integration platform without considering whether the systems and data we are integrating could threaten privacy protection. This represents a tremendous and crucial advantage that Cleura’s cloud service provides to both us and the Frends platform,” concludes Jonas.
The Frends platform includes a variety of different services – such as integration, process automation, BPA processes, API management, cloud integration, ground integration, monitoring, and automated alerts, everything in a bundled service offered in the cloud as an iPaaS.
As a supplier, it is essential that we meet our customers’ various needs and requirements.
Jukka Rautio, Head of Frends at HiQ
“As a supplier, it is essential that we meet our customers’ various needs and requirements. Kungsbacka Municipality’s requirement for the storage and handling of sensitive personal data is one excellent example of this. It is against this background that we offer several different cloud alternatives for the operation of Frends,” says Jukka Rautio, Head of Frends at HiQ.
photo: Kungsbacka Kommun
