Trondheim’s municipal employees use Gemini to enhance productivity and creativity, yielding improved public services

“Google Workspace with Gemini is transforming the way we work and the way we serve the community in Trondheim.”

Snapshot: The creativity, innovation, and efficiencies realized using Google Workspace with Gemini are enabling government employees in Trondheim, Norway, to better serve the municipality’s citizens and improve public services more proficiently.

• Language in technical documents simplified for a wider audience after review and rewrite by Gemini
• Source materials for AI-enabled chatbot answers compiled with NotebookLM, ensuring relevant responses
• Gemini and Google Workspace help municipality achieve GDPR compliance
• Review process for new city planning projects will accelerate using abstracts and summaries auto-generated by Gemini
• Ease of use encourages experimentation with Gemini, boosting creativity, innovation, and productivity

Origin story

Though they have museums full of Viking artifacts, Trondheim has a reputation as the country’s technology leader: It’s home to the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, the Foundation for Industrial and Technical Research, and the Geological Survey of Norway. And the municipality itself is a complex organization.

“As an urban planner, my work touches on everything from schools and real estate development to parks and roadways, from healthcare provision and cultural events to sustainability and accessibility — all the services and initiatives that make Trondheim, Norway, a wonderful place to live, work and visit,” says Ragna Fagerli, the municipality’s head of city planning. “So it can be challenging to find the right technology to help us fulfill such a broad and often urgent mission.”

Google Workspace and Gemini are helping Trondheim’s municipal government live up to the city’s reputation as a technology powerhouse.

Democratizing generative AI: Google Workspace with Gemini

In 2016, Trondheim transitioned from an on-prem to a cloud-based infrastructure and adopted Google Workspace for all 15,000 of its employees. “Working collaboratively in applications such as Google Docs and Sheets eliminated the version control issues that come from routing documents through a workflow as email attachments,” recalls Christian Bøhn, Trondheim’s co-head of IT. “It was nothing short of revolutionary.”

Google Sites has made building project-based intranet sites easier. And when remote work became necessary due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Google Meet allowed city employees to continue being productive. “Our team even uses Google Chat during city council meetings to ensure elected officials can answer difficult questions accurately by prompting them with answers,” adds Fagerli.

The recent rollout of Gemini to all municipality employees furthered the revolution. “By integrating Gemini into Google Workspace, Google made generative AI more affordable and accessible,” Bøhn explains. “It’s helping all of us do what we do more creatively and efficiently.”

Using Gemini and Gems to simplify complex tasks securely

The urban planners on Fagerli’s team compile reports and create plans for the elected officials who ultimately decide what to build and what not to build, which services to offer and which to discontinue. “We want to work as quickly and efficiently as possible — budgets are often tight, and time is always of the essence,” she explains.

But the plans for any new project must be reviewed and approved by community members, elected officials, and affected city departments such as police, fire, and environmental protection. And the planning documents for these new projects can be hundreds of pages long.

“We’ve begun to save ourselves and our constituents time by using Gemini to create abstracts and summaries that make the review process easier and faster,” Fagerli reports. “We’re also using Gemini to summarize responses to the plans from the community.” Trondheim statisticians even use it to help them write code in “R” to analyze data.

Urban planners and architects sometimes use technical language that a lay audience may be unfamiliar with. Fagerli’s team saves time by prompting Gemini to rewrite a very technical document in language that’s accessible to a wider audience — then review it to ensure it’s accurate — rather than rewriting it themselves. “Because Gemini understands Norwegian like a native, it helps us communicate with our constituents more clearly,” she adds.

Her team is also building custom Gems within Gemini to help them more easily understand information in the various complex legal texts, planning laws, and municipal codes that affect their work. The Gems generate answers only from the content that they’ve specified and provide answers that are easier to understand because they use less jargon.

The nature of the work done across Trondheim’s municipal government often involves personally identifiable information, which is protected by GDPR regulations in the European Union. “Gemini complied with all safety and security regulations right out of the box, which made the municipality’s IT department confident they could integrate it into workflows safely,” offers Bøhn.

Just the facts, please: NotebookLM

Trondheim is now seeing what impact NotebookLM can have. Access to the widest array of resources can often be an advantage. But some projects must carefully manage the source materials from which facts are gleaned. NotebookLM gives employees control of the context from which documents are created and answers are derived.

For example, NotebookLM was used to distill a concise HR handbook from approximately 80 lengthy HR-related documents. Team leaders can now query the handbook and get accurate information on things like sick leave, making these policies easier to understand.

Furthermore, Trondheim's regulations are often written in complex legal language that’s hard for laypeople to follow. NotebookLM helps make this information more accessible to the public. Bøhn is now exploring how a NotebookLM chatbot trained only on those materials might provide easy-to-understand answers about everything from the hours it’s permissible to use a lawn mower usage to how to file construction permits, thereby increasing compliance with Trondheim’s laws and regulations.

High adoption + experimentation = innovation x creativity

Because Gemini is easy to use and doesn’t require IT support to set up, the adoption rate for has been very high, and usage has grown organically, unleashing the creative potential in Fagerli’s department and all across municipal government. “Gemini enables us to experiment with generative AI in our daily work, fostering innovation and leading to new discoveries,” she observes. “And in urban planning, such efficiencies and innovation are tangible: They show up in faster housing construction for a growing population, a cleaner environment, and better public services to make living in Trondheim more enjoyable.”

Tangible benefits have also shown up in the work environment, where providing the latest technology has improved both morale and motivation, and automating repetitive or mundane tasks has freed up more time for creative and meaningful ones.” “Employees report being happier and more productive, and that kind of workplace culture is making it possible to recruit the most qualified and talented job candidates,” Fagerli reports.

To further spur creativity, Bohn’s team conducts webinars whenever new functionality emerges and to disseminate best practices for prompting. “This makes learning to work with Gemini fun and collaborative,” Bøhn adds, “And just as importantly, it makes people comfortable with experimenting — and experimentation yields innovation.” Various departments have even created special spaces in Chat where employees share new use cases for Gemini that they discover.

“People often imagine government bureaucracies to be slow to change and behind the curve technologically, observes Bjørn Villa, the Municipality of Trondheim’s chief information officer, who was responsible for bringing Google Workspace to the city nearly a decade ago. “But in Trondheim we’ve shown that the public sector can adopt the newest technology to improve services to our citizens and create a more efficient workplace and a more inventive and imaginative office culture.” He concludes, “Google Workspace with Gemini is transforming the way we work and the way we serve the community in Trondheim.”