Falu Municipality scaled from 20 to 100+ integrations with Frends, reducing manual work, eliminating consultants and enabling secure, API-driven services.
On a winter day in Falun, a resident checks the water temperature before heading out for a cold plunge in Stångtjärn, one of the region’s lakes. It’s a small moment — a quick decision made in seconds — but behind it sits a chain of integrations connecting systems, APIs and data sources across the municipality.
For citizens, the experience is simple. For Falu Municipality, making it simple required a fundamental shift in how their systems communicate.
Because while digital services are becoming more visible, the real work happens behind the scenes, where integrations determine whether services are slow or seamless, fragmented or unified.
A legacy setup that worked but held them back
Falu Municipality’s integration journey began long before Frends. Back in the early 2010s, the team implemented Microsoft BizTalk as their integration platform. The system itself was stable and reliable, but it came with a structural limitation: the knowledge and development capability didn’t sit inside the organization.
The setup is familiar to organizations relying on the legacy server.
“We were using consultants. We translated business needs to the BizTalk consultants and they built the integration for us,” explains Håkan Norlin, IT Architect at Falu Municipality.
This approach created a dependency that slowed everything down. Every new integration required external involvement. Every change meant coordination, cost and delay. And over time, it limited how much the municipality could evolve its digital services.
At the same time, many processes — especially file transfers — remained manual.
The platform wasn’t exactly failing. But it wasn’t enabling progress either.
A return, a reset and a new direction
Håkan Norlin had been part of that early journey. Having worked at Falu Municipality since 2010, he was involved in the original BizTalk implementation. After a few years away, he returned in 2023 to a familiar situation, but with a very different opportunity.
This time, the organization was ready to rethink its approach. There was growing recognition of the need for APIs, better integration capabilities, and, most importantly, internal ownership.
Instead of continuing with a consultant-driven model, the team began evaluating platforms that would allow them to build and manage integrations themselves.
That shift in mindset became the foundation for everything that followed.
Choosing Frends: control, security, and independence
When Falu Municipality selected Frends, the decision was based on changing how the organization worked.
The first priority was control.
“Maybe we can develop these things ourselves,” pondered Håkan early on. The plan worked: "now we're building all the file integrations ourselves. We're building the APIs. So far we ahve managed to build everything ourselves, we haven't needed any consultants.”
For a public sector organization, control also means compliance. Handling sensitive data — including potentially health-related information — requires strict governance over where and how data is processed.
“We should be able to process any data, very sensitive data, even medical data. Another pre-requisite was that we should have everything on-premises,” says Håkan.
And just as important was reducing reliance on external vendors — both from a cost perspective and a capability standpoint.
Migrating from BizTalk and unlocking scale
The transition away from BizTalk was the first major milestone. While the migration took around a year and a half, much of the work — especially file integrations — was completed quickly.
What followed was not just a migration, but an expansion. Where the municipality previously had around 20 integrations, they now maintain over 100.
This growth reflects a shift from isolated connections to a scalable integration layer that supports the municipality’s evolving digital landscape.
A team of three, and a new way of working
At the center of this transformation is a remarkably small team. Three people — each with different strengths — now manage the municipality’s entire integration environment.
Håkan brings architectural thinking and long-term vision. One colleague specializes in .NET development and handles more complex implementations. The third combines development skills with a focus on data and analytics through Power BI.
Together, they form a compact but highly effective unit. Their setup is efficient. Despite managing a growing number of integrations, the team only spends a fraction of their time working directly with Frends.
The result is not just operational efficiency, but autonomy. The municipality no longer depends on external consultants to build or maintain integrations — a shift that fundamentally changes both speed and cost.
Faster development, better visibility and shared ownership
One of the most immediate changes since onboarding Frends has been speed.
Building integrations is no longer a slow, externally managed process. Instead, the team can design and implement solutions quickly, adapting to the unique requirements of each system.
This flexibility is critical in a municipal environment, where no two integrations are exactly alike.
It is also the advice he gives to other public sector organizations:
“If you want to move fast, build APIs simple, Frends is a good platform. Build up the knowledge yourself so you can build the integration and the APIs and not to rely on consultants.” - Håkan Norlin, IT Architect, Falu Municipality
At the same time, visibility has improved across the organization. With real-time monitoring and accessible dashboards, issues can be identified and resolved quickly, often without involving the integration team at all.
This shift distributes ownership more broadly, enabling other teams to take responsibility for the systems they manage.
Reducing costs and complexity
Under the previous model, Falu Municipality paid for licenses, consultant development and ongoing service agreements. Today, those external dependencies are gone.
“Now we're just paying licenses. We are saving money, absolutely,” he says.
But the real benefit goes beyond cost. By simplifying the integration landscape and bringing capabilities in-house, the municipality has reduced complexity, making it easier to scale and adapt over time.
Building the foundation for citizen-facing services
While much of this work happens behind the scenes, its impact is increasingly visible to residents.
Falu Municipality is currently developing a new e-services portal designed to give citizens a unified view of their interactions with the municipality — from ongoing cases to invoices and personal data.
Frends plays a central role in making this possible. By connecting systems that were previously isolated, the municipality can present a single, coherent experience to its users.
APIs as the foundation for the future
Looking ahead, Håkan sees APIs as the key to unlocking better services and greater efficiency. The goal is to move beyond individual integrations and create a structured API layer that orchestrates data across systems, enabling faster development and more flexible applications.
This approach not only supports internal development but also aligns with broader public sector initiatives focused on standardization and interoperability.
Across Sweden, municipalities are working toward more standardized digital services, enabling citizens to interact with public institutions in a consistent way, regardless of location.
Falu Municipality is actively contributing to these efforts.
“There are national initiatives to standardize services from different municipalities and agencies. Frends is a big part of that because everything is about APIs and integration.” Håkan Norlin, IT Architect, Falu Municipality
With a solid foundation in place, Falu Municipality is now focused on scaling its integration platform further.
Plans include:
- Introducing load balancing to support growing volumes
- Separating internal and external APIs for improved security
- Expanding API-driven services
- Enhancing visibility through integration mapping and CMDB
One particularly ambitious goal is to create a system where integrations effectively document themselves, providing full transparency into how systems are connected.
“Frends is easy, fast and reliable. It doesn’t solve all the APIs and integrations, but it does most of it. It’s good value for the money,” he says.