Human-centered AI in Vestby: How Ayfie transforms casework

Vestby municipality is bringing generative AI into casework with people firmly in charge, data stored in Norway and a careful, secure approach from day one.

Vestby municipality sits on the Oslofjord at the southern edge of Follo in Akershus, with around 20,000 inhabitants and roughly 1,700 employees.

Background

Vestby municipality sits on the Oslofjord at the southern edge of Follo in Akershus, with around 20,000 inhabitants and roughly 1,700 employees. The municipality is growing fast, and like many others, it faces increasing volumes of citizen inquiries that must be handled correctly, quickly, and in line with the law.

Andreas Jeksrud, the municipality’s digitalization lead, leads the work with artificial intelligence. For him the starting point was clear: AI should be safely introduced. It wasn’t about moving fastest, but about seeing how the technology actually works in Vestby’s everyday operations.

The challenge

Handling citizen inquiries means the caseworker has to find the right legislation, decide whether the case is clear enough, and gather more information when needed. Long and linguistically dense inquiries are especially time consuming.

Several Norwegian municipalities have experienced how badly things can go with uncritical AI use: open tools have fabricated sources and court decisions that don't exist, with major consequences for the cases where they were used. For Vestby the lesson was simple: productivity can't come at the expense of accountability, privacy, or control.

The solution

Vestby selected Ayfie, a Norwegian-owned company, because the platform is built for exactly this: powerful AI on the municipality’s own terms.

Ayfie AI Assistant as a support tool. How it works today:

An inquiry comes in, and the caseworker can paste it into the Assistant.
The Assistant consults the 28 indexed legal provisions the municipality has prepared, suggests relevant legislation and next steps, and assesses whether the inquiry is clear and readable or if it's unclear. Then it makes suggestions for what the caseworker might need to ask the sender for.
The Assistant is used, among other things, against the Freedom of Information Act, the Public Administration Act, the Property Tax Act, the Parliamentary Ombudsman’s practice, and the municipality’s own guidelines.

Case Management Agent for disclosure requests. For requests for access to public records, the Case Management Agent provides caseworkers with decision support regarding the Freedom of Information Act, ensuring cases are handled with higher quality and consistency.

Humans in the driver’s seat. Ayfie is deliberately not connected to where inquiries come in, nor to where decisions are sent out. The tool is a reference and an advisor, the caseworker verifies, extracts, and decides. No decisions are made automatically.

Data in Norway, self-hosted. The solution runs in the municipality’s own environment, and the data is stored in a Norwegian data center (Norway East), at the same location as the municipality’s other data. No models are trained on residents’ information.

Built-in privacy. The assistant flags what may be sensitive personal information, such as national ID numbers and health information, and content is redacted when it isn't relevant to the case.

Controlled rollout. For now three employees have access, all after thorough and personalized training, ensuring safe use from day one.

Results

Vestby is early on purpose, but the value is already visible:

Greatest benefit on long and linguistically dense inquiries, where the assistant gives the caseworker a faster overview.
Time saved can be used on more complex cases.
A secure, accountable approach that protects privacy and data sovereignty from the start.

The way forward

Vestby sees this as a first step and will expand use in line with the experience the municipality gains. The philosophy behind it is best summed up by Jeksrud himself:

“Without a human, it's just artificial.”
Andreas Jeksrud, Head of Digitalization, Vestby Municipality

It’s Ayfie’s approach in a nutshell: advanced AI that makes employees faster and more confident, with both people and data under the municipality’s own control.