“I think working with forms is great fun,” says Beate Bringe.

Britt-Unni Baggerød, Archives Manager at Moss Municipality, nods in agreement.

The two form builders became colleagues when Moss and the neighbouring municipality of Rygge merged into the new municipality of Moss at the start of 2020. Today, Moss is home to around 53,000 residents. Beate and Britt-Unni use the Interact+ platform from ACOS to design forms and collect structured data that flows automatically into the municipality’s case and records management system.

In other words, the era of paper applications in the mail tray, PDF files on the website and heavy manual processing is over.

Email replaced with digital forms: 20% increase in digital submissions

Beate has worked in the IT department at Moss Municipality for many years, and she has no doubt: digital forms have given the municipality a much-needed digital boost, with impressive results.

One of those results came in 2024, when the municipality replaced its shared email address with targeted digital forms.

“Before, the document centre had to read, sort and forward around 200 general inquiries by hand every single month,” Beate says.

“With Interact+, residents are now guided to the right form before they get in touch, so each inquiry lands directly with the people who will handle it. General inquiries, for example, now go through a dedicated contact form that is integrated directly with the service centre’s CRM system.”

Beate Bringe

According to Britt-Unni, the change has saved the document centre team a great deal of time and manual sorting. And it doesn’t stop there.

“After we removed the email address from our website and replaced it with digital forms, the share of submissions coming in through digital channels rose by 20%,” she says. 

Up to 60 working days saved per year with one digital form

Beate points to another success story. The municipality’s 250–300 activity contacts – support workers who accompany residents to leisure activities – used to submit handwritten paper timesheets every month. Reception staff spent two to three working days a month deciphering handwriting and checking and approving the timesheets by hand. The payroll office then spent a day and a half on data entry alone.

“It was a huge job for the staff,” Beate recalls. Fortunately, that is now a thing of the past.

“Today we spend just a couple of hours processing the timesheets, thanks to Interact+ and Excel exports. We only need to do spot checks and make small adjustments before the file goes to the payroll office. Payroll has gone from a day and a half to an hour and a half to check the file and upload everything directly into the payroll system.”

The change has not only cut processing time dramatically, it has also virtually eliminated errors in the timesheets. In the past, the activity contacts often got in touch in the days after payday because of human errors in their timesheets. Now that everything is registered digitally, those inquiries have almost stopped.

“We’ve calculated that we save up to 60 working days a year on this,” Beate says.

The activity contacts are pleased too, because they now get paid faster.

“Before, it could take up to a month from when they handed in their timesheets until their pay was approved and ready to be paid out. Now the same process takes a couple of days. That means they can submit their timesheets on the last day of the month and still get paid on time. It’s a big improvement for the people who use the form,” Beate says.

From manual work to automated processes

Forms and records management working together

Britt-Unni is the system administrator for the municipality’s case and records management system. She explains that data capture and transfer to the archive run smoothly when the form platform and the records system are well integrated.

“The biggest advantage of connecting Interact+ to our case and records management system is that we can automate processes and save a great deal of time. For example, we can set rules for each form that decide whether a submission needs a manual check or can be filed directly in the record.”

Britt-Unni Baggerød

Can digital forms make you happy?

Britt-Unni highlights automatic routing as a key success factor.

“It has greatly reduced the manual work at the document centre. Before, forms came into our records system and then had to be moved by hand to the right line-of-business systems. Now each submission is routed automatically to the right system, and that frees up a lot of our time.”

The team can track each transfer and make sure it arrives correctly, so they stay in full control of the forms at all times. For Britt-Unni, that made a real difference.

“When the automatic routing went live, I almost felt a sense of happiness. Can digital forms actually make you happy?” she asks, laughing.

“It’s often the small things that make our working day easier. We’re under strong pressure to cut costs and work more efficiently, and that won’t change in the years ahead. So every little thing we can automate makes a real difference to us.”

The road to success: Build high-quality forms

These gains are no accident. The key is the quality of the forms, which is essential for capturing structured data. This is where Interact+ plays the leading role.

Built-in logic

Britt-Unni and Beate describe Interact+ as an easy-to-use tool that makes building forms quick and simple. Among its many features, Beate’s personal favourite is the map module.

“The map module is so easy to use. The complex setup has been replaced by drag-and-drop, so we can easily pick out the data fields we need. Residents also get a better experience when the information they need is just a click away on the map.”

For Britt-Unni, one task in Interact+ is more fun than all the others: building logic into a new form.

“With paper forms, it was hard to guide people as they filled them in. With digital forms in Interact+, it’s easy. Depending on the purpose of the form, we add branching so people only see the questions that are relevant to them. The logic also makes sure they fill in the right form in the first place.”

Britt-Unni Baggerød

Safe and secure data collection

Moss Municipality must meet strict security and privacy requirements when it collects and stores sensitive data. Replacing paper and filing cabinets with digital solutions has made that much easier.

“It’s much easier to protect security and privacy now that submitted forms are handled safely and digitally,” Beate explains.

Beate and Britt-Unni have noticed that the whole organization has become more aware of security and privacy. That was not the case in the early years of digital forms.

“At first, many people kept making forms on paper or in whatever tool they happened to find. We constantly had to stay one step ahead and explain that forms must be built and managed in Interact+ to ensure secure data collection and proper long-term storage,” Britt-Unni says.

Today, more and more colleagues come straight to Beate and Britt-Unni for help with their forms. Together, they work through key questions such as:

• What will we use this information for?
• Do we need to know this?
• Where will we store the information?

“It’s fun to see how impressed they are by what digital forms can do. The reaction is often: ‘Wow, you can do that too?’”

Are we collecting more data than we need?

Britt-Unni stresses that the municipality should not collect more information than necessary.

“When we design a digital form, we define exactly what information we need to achieve its specific purpose. We also keep free-text fields to a minimum. A solution like Interact+ makes it easy to follow the principle of data minimization.”

Beate explains that residents log in with a secure digital ID.

“That way, we always know who we’re receiving information from, and we can collect a signature when one is needed.”

The only exception is forms that let residents give feedback anonymously, for example to complain about a municipal service. But those forms are hardly ever used, Britt-Unni says.

“If people are unhappy, they’d rather complain on social media.”

“Or in the local paper,” Beate adds.

“Trust is a benefit in itself”

Security is also the top priority when data is transferred and stored for the future. As Archives Manager, Britt-Unni decides which forms must be kept for the archive. She works closely with Beate and consults the municipality’s privacy officer on questions about privacy legislation and data minimization.

“Residents should feel confident that we take good care of the information they give us. That trust is a benefit in itself,” Britt-Unni concludes.

Want to learn more about Interact+? 

We’d love to hear from you!