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Local Sweden
05-03-2025
- Business
- Local Sweden
Swedish Migration Agency revamps website to make life easier for permit applicants
'We know that users on the old website easily became overloaded with information and had a hard time knowing what was relevant to them, right now. Therefore, a lot of work has been put into prioritising the content and refining the information on each page,' Linda Widmark, communications director at the Migration Agency, said in a statement. The new website appears to have been closely modelled on its equivalent in Denmark, with visitors immediately met on the homepage by links with more information if you 'want to apply', 'want to extend', 'waiting for a decision', 'have received a decision' and so on. 'Most types of applications now also have a visual step-by-step overview of what the application process looks like, from start to finish. Being able to see the big picture from the start has been a common desire in interviews with users,' said Widmark. The Migration Agency told The Local last year that the new website would also provide a more up-to-date and accurate English version, after the old website was criticised for occasional discrepancies between the Swedish version and those translated into other languages. 'The English version harmonises better with the Swedish one, which is good since most applicants are not Swedish-speakers, at least not the first time around,' relocation expert Lena Rekdal from Nimmersion told The Local about her first reaction to the new website. She welcomed that some pieces of vague information on the previous site had been clarified, but both she and migration consultant Saaya Sorrells-Weatherford, co-founder of Emigreat, mentioned that the new website still leaves out certain essential information, which requires a lot of applicants to have in-depth knowledge of Swedish migration law. Sorrells-Weatherford said that she thought the new website was 'better structured towards the end user (a non-Swedish immigrant) than previously' and praised a more comprehensive 'time to decision' page. However, although it appears to be more user-friendly for individual permit applicants, that's not the case for the section for employers, she said. 'If the Migration Agency's page is also meant to be a resource for employers to prevent them from making compliance mistakes that could impact their employees, then their information should also be more accessible. The information once you get into the employer page is better than before, it's just harder to find,' she argued. A few bugs such as faulty links and being slow to load were reported by several users (and experienced by The Local) on the first day of the launch, and the Migration Agency apologised for teething errors. But Rekdal all in all welcomed the attempt to improve the user experience. 'It will be exciting to watch the Migration Agency's journey of growth and it's a good initiative to improve for employers, who are responsible for making sure people have the right permits and the right working conditions,' she said.
Local Sweden
25-02-2025
- Local Sweden
Sweden's Migration Agency to launch new website on March 5th
'Our current website is old, difficult to navigate and resource intensive to manage,' Linda Widmark, communications director for the Migration Agency, told The Local via email last autumn. At the time there was no specific date for the new website to be rolled out, although Widmark said that it would be ready in early 2025. A banner on the Migration Agency's website now states that a 'brand new version' of the website is to be launched on March 5th. Last year, Widmark said that the new website would focus less on having a large range of languages. The current version of the website publishes information in more than a dozen foreign languages, although the Swedish and English websites are the most fleshed out, with some languages – for example French and Spanish – mainly focusing on asylum migration. 'Because the reliability of the information is so important, we will not have 10-15 different languages on the new website, but focus on clear and comprehensible Swedish and English, so that we can work both faster and with better quality on our digital information.' following criticism of discrepancies between the Swedish version and English version. 'We use outsourced translators and a translation usually takes a week. Sometimes when it's extra urgent to get the information out, we publish the Swedish page first, before we have all the translations ready,' she said.
