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The Municipal Forum: a space for experience sharing and shared challenges
How are municipalities working to adopt new technology, organise change processes, and at the same time meet increasing demands for sustainable services? These were among the topics on the agenda when Norway Health Tech gathered its Municipal Forum.
Written by
Therese Oppegaard
As Norway’s largest national health cluster, Norway Health Tech is committed to facilitating low-threshold meeting arenas where the entire country can participate. The Municipal Forum is one such arena, where municipalities from across the country meet digitally to share experiences, discuss current challenges and gain inspiration across regions. Here, professional and strategic key stakeholders come together for open dialogue with the am of strengthening both execution capacity and collaboration.
The most recent Municipal Forum addressed several key challenges currently facing municipalities. A recurring theme was that implementing new technology in practice is as much about organisational change and new ways of working as it is about the solution itself. Experiences across municipalities show that value is created in the follow-up after implementation – through continuous improvement, competence development and clear leadership.
The need for closer collaboration between municipalities was also highlighted. A more coordinated approach to procurement and increased standardisation were identified as important measures to reduce complexity and strengthen execution capacity.
Topics such as health preparedness and prevention further illustrate the breadth of the challenges. Municipalities point to the need for better coordination across levels and sectors, and for more holistic approaches to tasks that are currently handled in a fragmented way. In particular, within prevention, there is a call for frameworks that better support long-term efforts and collaboration with other stakeholders. In NOU 2026:6 The New Welfare Municipality, proposals include both a broad, practice-oriented transformation programme and a more targeted scaling fund for following up successful solutions. Municipalities emphasise that programmes and funding for long-term initiatives – rather than one-off grants – are key to successfully driving transformation.
Would you like to learn more about the Municipal Forum – or how your municipality can participate? Please contact us at Norway Health Tech for an informal conversation.
The next session is already being planned, and we welcome suggestions for topics.
