Supporting Municipalities in their Merger Processes to build stronger Communities
Project: Fuzio
Locations: Valais, Switzerland
Industries: Government, Municipalities
Date: Since 2018
Links: fuzio.ch
The Challenge
The local municipalities are at the root of the Swiss political system. Based mostly on a voluntary commitment from elected officials, their tasks is becoming increasingly complex and demanding. In this context, mergers of municipalities, by pooling resources, often appear to be a solution. However, it requires special skills to ensure their success.
The Solution
A service created by Conexkt, Fuzio offers integrated support to municipalities before, during and after the merger process. Participatory approaches, drafting of the merger report, and the creation of a communication campaign: Fuzio brings together expertise from all horizons and makes it available to the municipalities according to their needs.
Press
Un rapport pose les fondements d’un rapprochement entre les 5 communes des deux rives. Canal 9
Les citoyens d’Isérables réservés face au projet de fusion. Le Nouvelliste
Local municipalities are at the root of the Swiss political system. However, as the elected officials' work is based mostly on a voluntary commitment, maintaining accountability is becoming increasingly complex and demanding for them.
As we move towards an increasingly complex world, many small municipalities are finding it challenging to efficiently manage their resources. Recently in Swiss politics, there has been a massive push towards merging smaller municipalities because they found that scattered resources made decision-making in the political sphere inefficient, leaving many people feeling unheard. It is also challenging to find individuals to elect because, in smaller municipalities, many individuals don’t want to commit to this sort of responsibility. However, Fuzio was an opportunity to showcase the power of “strength in numbers”.
The pooling of resources appeals to be a solution because it makes processes more cost-efficient and therefore convenient. However, the merging of municipalities can be very emotional because residents don’t want to lose their identity and feel like strangers in their own cities. To reduce the anxiety around the newly proposed system, Conexkt created Fuzio to support municipalities in their merger processes and work towards healthier local communities.
We wanted to help cities throughout the entire process to ensure that this change was as streamlined and adaptable as possible; it was our way of letting citizens know that Fuzio would be by their side regardless of what happens. The drafting of a merger report was an essential first step because we had to consider the social, economic, and environmental implications before proceeding with this process. With our team’s collective expertise, we worked to draw up a portrait of municipality concerns, suggesting that cities let the communities know as early as possible to allow ample time to process and adjust to these new relationships. We also held workshops with mayors and municipal councillors, conducted surveys, and had meetings and interviews with the mayors of five municipalities in Switzerland, their respective administrative teams, and citizens' groups. The entire process lasted more than 2 years and the various communication streams contributed to the project’s overall complexity.
Through these conversations, we felt the difficulties and sentiments that the people were conversing about, whether they were blockages and enthusiastic comments. We took all of that into account when creating the brand and collective entity for Fuzio by collaborating with specialists in human resources, marketing, digital transformation, economics, finances, taxes, communications, and data analysis. We focused on gathering the feelings of the populations within the municipalities of Chamoson, Isérables, Leytron, Riddes, and Saillon. We found that we implemented a participatory democracy system to make sure the people from any small municipality heard their ideas and contributed to the co-design of their cities’ future by going through with this project. With a transformed relationship with the people, there was increased dialogue and accountability with the people, furthering the vibrancy and accessibility of the democratic system and helping them make better decisions in the future.
“Working with Carole on the communication of the merger of our municipality with Charrat was a pleasure: rigor, creativity, respect for deadlines and budgets. ”
The merger process contains many emotional charges because cities link to identity, roots, and personal stories. There is a significant difference between informing and communicating the information to the citizens. We considered the project’s complexity when creating communication campaigns to help communities come together. We provided insights that were as objective as possible and showed populations the bigger picture from implementing this decision. Our goal was to help build healthy local communities and vibrant direct democracy while encouraging participatory democratic processes. Ultimately, the system we created helped to integrate populations as early as possible and managed the inhabitants’ expectations, as they were the ones impacted. We were truly privileged to have had accompanied the merger process of smaller municipalities of the center of Valais.