Our main goal with the project was to improve employees' digital skills and as a result reduce expenses on paper and toners, as well as to promote more environmentally friendly thinking. In this way we were also reducing the environmental footprint of each Municipality with an increase in efficiency from our staff due to transitioning from paper to digital. We also wanted to involve our colleagues in international projects and give them a chance to learn from peers and get in contact with different cultures and municipality realities. Serving also has a way of promoting Europeism as well as opening the door and promoting the predisposition of our colleagues to be involved in future Erasmus+ projects. Our last but not least important goal was to cement partnerships with our partners so that this project was th ground upon which other projects could flourish.
The application for this project emerged from the Liepaja Municipality. The reason for it was related to the continuous calling of their IT Department when colleagues had different problems related to printers and printing. It was obvious how many unnecessary printouts were made. That brought Liepaja to this project idea. As they did not have any experience, Liepaja used a partner search tool and found MVNP, and through discussions realised that there is a similar situation in local governments, and it needs to be changed. It was also observed that most often employees print out of habit, due to a lack of digital skills or due to outdated internal procedures. MVNP presented the idea to Mielec, its twin city and they were also having a similar problem and could relate to the project. IEBA organisation was invited due to its expertise as a training entity and a history of collaboration with municipalities. The consortium was then formed and from application start to working on the goal of digitalization and footprint reduction of each Municipality.