City of Lahti AI boosts public sector tasks

Lahti is the eighth biggest municipality located in Southern Finland with 120,000 city residents and a centre for 200,000 people in the region. It is a leading environmental city, European Green Capital for 2021 as well as a globally recognized sporting city. The City of Lahti employs around 3,700 employees in different service areas.

The City of Lahti is adopting artificial intelligence in a moderate and systematic manner through piloting and testing. After positive experiences and promising results, a strong foundation has been laid for the continuation of the Microsoft 365 Copilot project. AI can be a valuable tool for city employees, as it offers efficient solutions to a wide range of work challenges.

The City of Lahti team first familiarized themselves with the Microsoft 365 Copilot AI application in a Vision & Value workshop in spring 2024. In the three-part workshop, led by Fujitsu experts and funded by Microsoft, the Lahti employees recognized the potential of AI and identified possible use cases. In addition, the teams built a business case and developed a strategy for Copilot implementation.

The workshop reinforced the City of Lahti’s decision to begin piloting M365 Copilot. Initially, Fujitsu assessed the organization’s readiness for adopting the new technology. This included, among other things, analyzing SharePoint and OneDrive sharing settings and checking Teams privacy settings.

Long before Copilot was introduced to users, Lahti took decisive steps to ensure a secure and well-prepared foundation. Through a series of insightful M365 advisor meetings, the city proactively assessed its readiness and addressed potential risks early. A comprehensive data audit revealed over-sharing issues in SharePoint and OneDrive, which were swiftly resolved. With the help of detailed reporting, Microsoft Purview features were seamlessly integrated- ensuring that Copilot operates in a secure, compliant, and trusted environment.

A group of about twenty pilot users began to evaluate how Copilot suits the City of Lahti’s needs and what opportunities it offers.

Fujitsu’s expert team supported the piloting by organizing Digivartti, short digital learning sessions for the group on Copilot’s basic functions. The Digivartti sessions were complemented by practical workshops, which presented tips for forming good prompts and deepened knowledge of Copilot’s features. A number of practical exercises were also carried out.

In addition to Fujitsu’s training, the pilot users organized short informal updates among themselves, where users shared their experiences and observations on using Copilot.

The positive results of the pilot phase led to the City of Lahti deciding to acquire more licenses and expand usage to new units.

“Users who participated in the pilot found Fujitsu’s expert-led Digivartti training sessions, and especially the practical workshops, useful for learning to use Copilot, so we wanted to offer the same training to new users as well,” says Pasi Halme, Chief Designer for the City of Lahti.

The most motivated users out of the 60 pilot project participants could also sign up to join the Champion community, whose members received additional training and support from Fujitsu experts. The task of the community members is to advise their colleagues and to serve as an example and inspire other users to actively use Copilot.

In addition, Fujitsu organized a two-part workshop for a small target group, which presented the functions of Copilot agents and how they can be built using Copilot Studio.

“In the joint workshops, we identified several processes that could be automated and streamlined with Copilot agents. The first one decided upon was an agent that helps prepare for meetings and decide on follow-up actions. The intention is to continue testing agents for other processes as well,” Pasi Halme describes.

The Copilot AI application has primarily given users in the City of Lahti more time, as routine tasks can be condensed with Copilot’s help. Concrete examples were mentioned in the feedback: “Copilot is already transforming how work gets done by summarizing long email threads, capturing meeting notes, translating, and proofreading text, comparing documents, and more.”

Users gave Copilot an overall rating of 7/10, which indicates satisfaction and provides new development opportunities for the future.