City of Kouvola: the IMS operating system in everyday use

The city of Kouvola is an organization covering approximately 6,000 employees and with a turnover of about 500 million euros. The IMS operating system is in the first phase of introduction (year 2010) and the project is led by strategy designer Katariina Valtonen

Background to building the operating system

Before the IMS, process descriptions were on employees’ personal computers and network disks, within closed folders. Sharing of information, as well as process and strategy awareness, were not at the level where they should have been. More transparent operations were wanted and, therefore, a new operating system was a timely acquisition. The reasons why Kouvola municipality ended up with the IMS operating system were as follows: "It was in use in one sector and proved to be simple to use design tool. Ease of use and rapid implementation as a browser application supported its adoption.

The system in everyday work

The operating system is currently being built in Kouvola. Since this is a fairly large organization, teaching the system to all relevant parties takes time and requires training. About 50 people in the technical, education, basic security and group services in Kouvola city use IMS at the moment.”The core group is being trained to be administrators, and use of the editor is also being adopted at the same time with an intensive care method,” says Valtonen.

Valtonen praises the ease of use and usability of the browser of IMS’s design descriptions, which enables use of the operating system anytime and anywhere. Centralized availability and simplicity of descriptions, fast user support, helpful staff, a pleasant appearance and a low price were the reasons why the city of Kouvola ended up choosing the IMS operating system.

IMS is also used for strategy descriptions

Kouvola uses IMS not only for process descriptions, but also for strategy descriptions. In the future, an organizational reform will take place in the city whereby IMS will be used for the new organizational process descriptions, in addition to current state descriptions. In the near future, describing strategies will expand from strategy descriptions to strategy texts saved to a table hidden behind the image (a description of the stages - tab).