Digitalization and Environmental Aims in Municipalities

Many municipalities express a wish to use digital technologies to achieve environmental aims. However, there is still a need for a better understanding of how this should practically be done, both among municipalities and among ICT developers. We have used workshops and literature studies to formulate technological abilities of digitalization. We use two EU directives that are relevant for municipal environmental goals and combine the activities that these directives indicate with technological abilities of digitalization, in order to formulate practical implementations of digital technology to help these activities and reach the directives’ goals. We suggest that this method can be used for any municipal goal, as follows: (1) Identify the objective (in our case set by the EU-directives); (2) Identify what activities these points will require or generate; (3a) From a municipal viewpoint: Based on the results of 1 and 2, formulate and structure ideas of how digitalization can support the objectives and how those ideas can be implemented; (3b) From a provider’s viewpoint: Investigate what digital solutions supporting 1 and 2 exist, or how existing services can be tweaked to support the objectives and explore how new digital solutions supporting 1 and 2 can be developed.