From vision to reality

Department of Service and Innovation Annual Report 2025

Service and transformation

Role and strategic priorities

In 2025, the main themes for the Office of Service and Transformation centered on building stronger connections and collaboration across departments throughout the City administration. The office consists of two units that work closely with service owners across the City — whether delivering frontline services or advancing them through service design, digital solutions, or the user experience.

The office oversees Reykjavík City's Service Policy, and in one way or another, everything it does ties back to that policy. We are constantly looking for new ways to strengthen City services and empower staff to take meaningful action in support of them. The office manages the City's core digital products — including My Pages, the Búi solutions, and others — and works actively with service owners on digital advancement and the accompanying service transformation.

We focus on cross-disciplinary work with the shared goal of transforming and developing service delivery as a whole, while also carrying out and refining the digital solutions that support it.

Key improvement projects and developments

  • The City updated the Service Policy action plan.
  • Staff implemented Skóli Búi and linked Búi to My Pages.
  • The Suggestion Portal — a project focused on streamlining requests to the service center.
  • My Pages: Updates included an activity overview, phase one of credit card autopay, several new applications, and linking Búi to My Pages.
  • The department integrated Veita in collaboration with the Icelandic Association of Local Authorities.
  • Staff connected the transportation service to the Veita system.
  • Frontline services took over email inquiries for the City's swimming pools, along with the official email addresses for the Department of Environment and Planning and the Schools and Leisure Department.
  • The department analyzed and prepared to transfer phone and live chat support for the Department of Welfare from the Online Center to frontline services.
  • Staff also planned the relocation of the West Center's reception and front desk operations to the service center.
  • The department published a quality process for handling frontline inquiries, which included defined service levels.
  • Service advisors now have lookup access to the My Pages backend, allowing them to search residents by ID number and view their cases and applications, making it easier to assist people who need support or information about their submissions.
  • The service center updated its Genesys communication platform with an enhanced live chat experience and a redesigned, simplified call flow. Staff recorded a new phone greeting and updated the interface and information to reflect the City's voice.
  • To better reflect its broader role in delivering City services, the service center division was renamed to frontline services, and the title of service representative changed to service advisor.
  • Following its late-2024 rollout, the implementation and ongoing development of the Jira request system in frontline services continued.
  • The service center opened an electronic ID registration station and trained newly appointed registration officers.
  • Frontline services collaborated with waste collection and the Department of Environment and Planning to improve procedures and workflows.
  • Staff largely rewrote the service center's knowledge base during the year, introducing a standardized interface to improve information quality, simplify lookups, and speed up case handling.

Improvement and transformation projects of the year

 

 

Phone and live chat support for service centers, and West Center reception

One of the year's major projects involved preparing to take over frontline phone support for the City's service centers, a function previously handled by the Department of Welfare's Online Center. The goal was to consolidate first-contact support for City services into one central location: frontline services at the service center. This shift creates an opportunity to standardize first-tier service, build the expertise of service advisors, and deliver a more cohesive user experience. It also builds a cross-functional view of City services and a stronger foundation for identifying ways to improve how inquiries are handled and routed across departments.

When it became clear that the West Center faced facilities challenges, officials decided to explore whether frontline services and the service center space could absorb the center's reception and front desk operations. Because the City's digital journey and expanded self-service options have significantly reduced in-person visits in recent years, an opportunity emerged to make better use of both the physical space and the expertise of service advisors.

The service design team collaborated with Department of Welfare staff to analyze opportunities and future location scenarios for the West Center. The team presented these findings to project owners and key stakeholders.

Following this presentation, officials approved the September relocation of the West Center to Borgartún 12-14, transferring reception and front desk operations to frontline services. They also approved locating consultation rooms for the center's social workers within the service center. Preparations for the service center's service process redesign then began. Over Christmas and New Year's, the front desk, reception, and call center moved to temporary space on the first floor of Höfðatorg, where frontline services will remain until construction of the new service space is complete.

 

IT Services – diagnosis

The service design team analyzed the City's service portal and IT Services. Reviewers evaluated the service in its entirety and consulted service users throughout the process.

The project goals were:

  • Identifying challenges and opportunities within the City's IT Services
  • Mapping communication channels between IT Services and service users
  • Mapping the user experience of IT Services

Outcome:

  • The team presented challenges and opportunities to the project owner and key stakeholders.
  • The Project Council reviewed the findings on several occasions.
  • Work is underway to improve the service.
Illustration of two people writing on post-it notes on a wall.

Day parent project

In Reykjavík City's services for day parents, forms remained paper-based and required signatures from both parents and City staff. Processing these forms was time-consuming and unreliable, carrying a high risk of errors. Because the City subsidizes this service, identifying both risks and improvement opportunities was vital.

The project goals were:

  • Improve services for day parents and children's guardians
  • Make applications available in digital form and save time and effort for all stakeholders 
  • Strengthen the City's relationship with day parents

Outcome:

  • All forms are now available digitally
  • The application and termination processes have been significantly simplified
  • Staff developed the diagnosis and solutions in close collaboration with service users
Illustration of a sitting baby.

Most impactful improvement and transformation projects

In 2025, a range of service and transformation projects delivered tangible benefits for residents, staff, and businesses.

The implementation of Skóla-Búi had a significant impact on staff, as the solution simplifies case tracking, reduces preparation time, and supports more efficient information processing.

For residents, the new front end of the Suggestion Portal ranked among the year's most important improvement projects. The new interface simplifies submission by letting users select categories instead of writing detailed descriptions.

For businesses, adding a transaction overview to My Pages was a major step forward, giving companies greater transparency and easier access to information about payments to and from the City.

Developing new procedures, methods, and tools

Throughout the year, the City made deliberate progress in developing and rolling out new procedures, methods, and tools — all aimed at raising quality, increasing efficiency, and advancing a user-centered approach across its services and digital development efforts. Key priorities included improving internal processes, strengthening cross-team collaboration, bringing greater professional structure to design work, and using research and measurement to guide decision-making and continuous improvement.

  • Following the appointment of a new team leader, the department reviewed digital product design processes. The team incorporated DesignOps (Design Operations) methodology into their day-to-day work, bringing sharper focus to project management, workflows, process flow, and software and design governance.
  • A project to improve Hanna, Reykjavík's design system, launched during the year. The digital product design team established a Design Council with stakeholders from development teams to drive collaboration on key updates and improvements. That effort has led to substantial design work on components within the design system, laying the groundwork for the ongoing development of the City's digital solutions.
  • A user study examined how residents use artificial intelligence on the Reykjavík website and what they think of it. Results showed that residents generally view AI on the website favorably for finding information, though feedback pointed to opportunities to improve how content is presented and how the interface works.
  • A survey assessed the views of frontline service staff at Borgartún and the West Center ahead of the West Center's planned relocation to Borgartún 12-14. The survey aimed to assess staff experiences with workplace facilities, on-the-job safety, and access to training and information. These findings will inform the design of a new work environment for staff at Borgartún. Once the relocation is complete, the department will repeat the survey to measure how these factors have affected staff satisfaction.

Service culture and improvement work

Work continued throughout the year to strengthen service culture and put a mindset of continuous improvement into practice across the City. These projects were designed to engage staff, test service design methods, and create a space for solution-focused work on real service challenges.

Growth Lab

Reykjavík City hosted its service design sprint in the fall of 2025. Five teams from across the City administration took part, spending eight weeks developing solutions to challenges drawn from their own work environments. The project supports a culture of improvement in everyday work and demonstrates how to address service challenges in a structured, systematic way across the City administration.

Shoes in all sizes

As in previous years, the transformation division took part in Reykjavík City's Children's Culture Festival. This time, the focus was on teenagers in a workshop called "Shoes in All Sizes," where about 30 participants at the 100og1 youth center worked through real service challenges using service design methods.

Participants were divided into teams, with each receiving a different set of user stories drawn from a variety of user groups. Every story centered on users' needs, challenges, and experiences with City services. At the end of the workshop, teams presented solution prototypes designed to meet the needs of their respective user groups. Both participants and youth center staff came away highly satisfied with the workshop.

User research and information quality

User research and measurements drove improvements to services and public communications. During the year, a survey assessed how well users understood content on reykjavik.is, breaking down results by gender, age, and education level. The results showed no significant differences in comprehension across those variables, but they did highlight variation in information quality among the reviewed pages. These findings continue to shape ongoing efforts to improve how information is presented, written, and made accessible on the City's website.

Collaboration and implementing change

Collaboration with other departments and units grew stronger over the year and played a key role in carrying out the Service Policy and advancing service improvements.

Closer collaboration developed with the Department of Culture and Sports and the Department of Finance and Risk Management, where managers worked together to introduce the Service Policy and define specific actions and projects.

The team also worked with the City's swimming pools to survey user behavior and attitudes toward steam baths. A follow-up workshop with swimming pool directors helped develop a shared service vision, identify user needs, and craft responses to those needs.

The year's experience makes clear that successfully implementing change depends on both strong leadership and ongoing dialogue with staff and service owners. It is essential to meet people where they are, build trust, and be ready to collaborate whenever opportunities for improvement emerge. Many smaller projects across different teams can collectively lead to larger change when carried out with clear purpose and genuine collaboration.

To support continuous improvement, Torgið hosted education sessions on the Keys to Good Service, helping build a shared understanding of the Service Policy and what quality service looks like in practice.

Key challenges

Despite these positive outcomes, challenges surfaced during the implementation of transformation projects. Chief among them was unclear decision-making authority within individual projects. In several instances, teams completed substantial preparatory work before it became apparent that no party had clear authority to approve or carry out the proposed changes.

This experience highlights the importance of clearly defining responsibilities, authority, and decision-making processes from the very start of any project.

Lessons learned and the path forward

This year's lessons reinforce how essential cross-functional collaboration, active stakeholder engagement, and clear prioritization are to the success of transformation projects. Experience also shows that the best outcomes are achieved when service development, digital development, and operational improvements move forward together as part of a comprehensive service transformation.

Priorities for the coming year

In 2026, the primary focus will be on improving efficiency in service delivery. Particular attention will be paid to making better use of existing systems, processes, and infrastructure — and to tackling a broader range of challenges with the tools the City has already built.

Work to integrate frontline services and improve their internal processes will continue. Bringing the Department of Welfare's phone and live chat services into frontline services and the ÞON service center will create both challenges and opportunities for improving services for residents and staff alike. The project will require cross-functional collaboration within the office and across the department as a whole.

Special emphasis will be placed on working with other municipalities and the national government to develop solutions, particularly regarding Veita and the ongoing development of the Búi solutions. Additional work will focus on service measurement and defining key performance indicators for frontline services.

Focused efforts to build a strong service culture and a continuous improvement mindset will continue. Growth Lab will return in the fall of 2026, alongside continued efforts to advance service transformation projects and strengthen collaboration with City workplaces, including at the Children's Culture Festival.