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Ayfie
Vanylven Municipality
Learn how Vanylven Municipality Is deploying Ayfie. One of the country’s smallest municipal administrations gives the entire organization access to generative AI on its own sensitive data, without sacrificing privacy, security, or control.
Vanylven is a municipality in Møre og Romsdal county on the western coast of Norway, part of the Sunnmøre region. The administrative centre is the village of Fiskå, with other communities including Åheim, Åram, Eidså, Slagnes, and Syvde. It covers about 385 square kilometres and is home to roughly 3,000 residents.
Background: a small municipality in major transition
Vanylven is located in the far southwest of Sunnmøre, covering 385 km² with people spread across valleys and fjords, and around 3,000 residents. Like many rural municipalities, Vanylven faces two simultaneous challenges: a demographic wave and a tight economy.
“The demographic wave hits from 2027. At the same time, in 2025 we took a big financial hit that used up our savings. We had to reorganize and adopt new technology at the same time, with little money.”
Andreas Nørve, municipal director of Vanylven Municipality
The solution the municipality settled on was not amalgamation, but technology.
“I don’t believe municipal mergers are the solution. I believe technological solutions are the alternative to the demographic development we see ahead.”
— Andreas Nørve
As part of the reorganization, the municipality slimmed down the administration, removed the position called municipal department head (kommunalsjef) and moved to ten departments. The result was one of Norway’s smallest municipal administrations.
“There are no people in the town hall today; the town hall has been emptied. When an external evaluator reviewed us, he said: ‘Andreas, now you have Norway’s smallest municipal administration.”
— Andreas Nørve
The challenge
Like most Norwegian municipalities, Vanylven holds large amounts of information spread across specialist systems, file servers, email, and collaboration platforms. For caseworkers this means time spent searching, and a constant trade-off between efficiency and privacy requirements.
At the same time, the public sector imposes strict requirements: data must remain under the municipality’s own control, access control must be followed to the letter, and GDPR is mandatory. Many AI tools on the market improve productivity but at the expense of the very data security a municipality is obligated to safeguard.
Vanylven’s first attempt was already in 2017, when the municipality tested a simple chatbot online, but it was far from mature.
“In 2017 we tried a chatbot. It didn’t understand the questions, and in the end a resident was told to call NAV. Then we took it down. At the time we thought this would be the solution, but it is only now that we have succeeded.”
— Andreas Nørve
The solution
Vanylven chose Ayfie precisely because the platform is built to provide the power of generative AI without moving data out of the municipality’s own systems and control. Ayfie Assistant gives employees an AI advisor that answers questions directly against the municipality’s own documents. The solution allows the municipality to choose from the market’s leading language models, and the municipality can limit itself to GDPR-certified models.
“Instead of using open solutions and risking things leaking onto the web, employees can upload their own documents and search SharePoint, Outlook and OneDrive. Everyone has received their closed, secure AI advisor. That was the beginning for us with Ayfie.”
— Andreas Nørve
From there the municipality stepped further and built a dedicated knowledge base for HR and personnel.
“We have uploaded all 14 current personnel regulations into a dedicated chat. That is precisely what must lie at the foundation for an AI advisor: a very good knowledge base you can feed it.”
— Andreas Nørve
Because not all employees have access to the intranet from home, the municipality made the advisor available outside its own systems as well:
“Especially in health, many are using their own PCs at home. Therefore we put a public AI advisor for personnel out publicly, so they can search it from there.”
— Andreas Nørve
Ayfie Index connects the data sources, SharePoint, OneDrive and Exchange, and makes them searchable and possible to ask natural questions against. With built-in OCR, scanned content also becomes searchable, and all searches respect existing access control: employees only see what they have rights to. The next step is to index the municipality’s case and archive system.
“We will index our case and archive system so that caseworkers can search it, get all the information and use it in case handling, and see what has been done previously. Access will of course follow the roles each person has.”
— Andreas Nørve
The Case Management Agent gives caseworkers decision support, better oversight and higher quality and consistency in the handling of access requests. The entire solution can be operated as a cloud service from Ayfie or installed in the municipality’s own environment, data remains in the municipality’s own infrastructure.
Results
Vanylven is still early in the journey, but the benefits are taking shape:
One of Norway’s smallest municipal administrations, made possible by automation and AI
All employees have access to a secure AI advisor on the municipality’s own data
HR and personnel questions are answered directly against up-to-date policies, including for employees without intranet access
Rapid rollout: “For us this is moving very fast. We started this autumn, and it’s moving quickly.”
Always access to the newest language models
Ayfie ensures that new language models are made available continuously, so the municipality always has access to the latest technology without extra work. The platform can be expanded with custom chatbots, more connectors, and MCP integrations such as Lovdata as the municipality’s needs grow.
“AI is the key, but you need the infrastructure in place and good systems that themselves use AI. By 2030 I think we will have one mayor, one municipal director, and a few service staff, and there AI will be the key.”
— Andreas Nørve, municipal director of Vanylven Municipality
