Town hall case study: digital signage at Aulnay-sous-Bois

Three connected screens, one communications team, and a town of 86,360 residents kept informed without going through a printer. Here is how the French council did it.

3Connected screens
2020Went live
+7,000Screens run on EMITY

Crest of the town of Aulnay-sous-Bois, a French local authority near Paris

The context

Three screens to inform a whole town

Aulnay-sous-Bois is a French town on the north-eastern edge of Paris, with 86,360 residents (2022 census, INSEE — the French national statistics office). Its communications team serves two audiences at once: residents walking into the town hall, and council staff.

In 2020 the council brought three connected screens into service, run on EMITY across different council buildings, on the Premium plan. The idea is simple: compose a notice in a browser and watch it reach all three screens, with no travel and no trip to the printer.

What makes the case worth reading is the scale. Three screens for a town of more than 86,000 people is not a large digital programme — it is a start, placed where people actually pass. That is what makes it transferable to almost any local authority.

Portrait touch totem in a council building lobby listing the service desks, being read by a resident

The need

What a council’s communications actually demand

Informing a town is not like informing a company. Four constraints shape the project.

Print arrives after the event

Artwork, sign-off, printer, putting it up: a poster takes days. A rescheduled council meeting, a closed service desk, a burst water main or a weather warning will not wait that long.

Several audiences in the same lobby

A resident waiting for the registrar, a member of staff walking through, a community group dropping off a form: the same screen has to carry different messages depending on the hour and the building.

Nobody on the team is a designer

In a council, one small team looks after the newsletter, the website, social media and the notice boards. The tool has to be usable without page-layout software and without an outside agency.

Statutory notices still have to be displayed

Orders, council minutes, planning applications: some information has to stay available to the public. That is the subject of digital statutory display, which runs from the same platform.

The answer

What EMITY brings to the council

Six building blocks, all of them in use on this deployment.

E-MANAGER, the dashboard

All three screens are run from a browser. A notice leaves a desk in the communications team and lands on the right screen, with nobody travelling to the building.

The built-in EMITY editor

With the built-in editor, a notice is composed straight inside the platform, with no third-party software and no export. And if your team already uses Canva or Adobe Express, both plug in.

Widgets to fill the gaps

Time, date, weather, news, RSS feeds: the loop stays alive between two council campaigns, without anyone having to produce fresh content every week.

Scheduling by time slot

Opening hours in the morning, the what’s-on listing at lunchtime, the council meeting the evening before. Each message sits on its slot and clears itself afterwards.

One message, several screens

A service notice goes to all three screens at once; a neighbourhood announcement goes only to its own. Groups are set up once and reused.

Works with the screens already there

EMITY is tied to no display brand. A mixed estate, inherited from several purchases, is run from one interface without replacing anything.

Corridor of a civic centre with two wall-mounted screens showing the same council information

Day to day

Three screens from one browser

Everything happens in a browser. The communications team composes a notice, schedules it against a time slot and sends it to one screen or to all three. No travel, no USB stick carried from one building to the next, no supplier to ring up just to change a date.

That is what changes the relationship with time. Something decided in the morning is on screen by the afternoon; a notice that has expired clears itself on the date it was given.

In practice

How a rollout runs

Four steps, the same for three screens and for thirty.

01

The screen goes in

In the reception hall, on a totem in the middle of the footfall, or outdoors on the forecourt. Format follows the spot: portrait for a totem, landscape for a wall.

02

It connects to the platform

On a connected display (Android TV, Tizen, webOS), the E-SOFT app installs straight onto the screen. On a display that is not connected, an E-BOX media player takes over. So the player is not systematic.

03

The communications team composes

In the built-in editor: a background, a headline in large type, one line of information, a weather widget. Templates carry over from one campaign to the next.

04

The estate is run remotely

Groups, time slots, swapping a visual, checking how the screens are doing: it all goes through E-MANAGER, from any desk in the building.

The effects

What the screen actually changes

Reception hall of a council building with a wall-mounted information screen beside the service desks

The reception hall starts earning its keep

Time spent waiting at a service desk is time available. Opening hours, how to apply for something, the next council meeting: the information arrives without anyone having to ask at the counter.

Portrait touch totem in a council building lobby listing the service desks, being read by a resident

Wayfinding no longer rests on a member of staff

A totem at the entrance lists the service desks. The most repetitive questions get their answer before anyone reaches the counter.

Outdoor digital information totem on the paved forecourt of a civic building

Communication leaves the building

A screen on the forecourt also reaches the people who never walk through the door: market days, roadworks, events, holiday opening hours.

In the council’s words

What the communications team says

“It is about responsiveness, time saved and cost. As an investment it could well pay for itself in the end.”

Communications team, Aulnay-sous-Bois town hall (translated from French)

“It shows we are rather ahead of the curve, and that is a good thing.”

Communications team, Aulnay-sous-Bois town hall (translated from French)

The takeaway

Starting with three screens

Plenty of councils put the subject off because they picture a heavy programme: a network of screens, a capital budget, a tender. Aulnay-sous-Bois shows the opposite — three screens are enough to start, and the estate grows afterwards at the pace of the need.

  • ✓The first screen goes where the footfall is heaviest — almost always the reception hall.
  • ✓Running costs do not move as the estate grows: the same person runs three screens or thirty.
  • ✓Staff learn on one screen before managing ten; the pace follows the team, not the supplier.
  • ✓Every new site reuses templates that already exist, instead of starting from a blank page.

What to check before committing

Three things decide how comfortable this is to live with in a local authority: composing without page-layout software, scheduling by time slot (so an expired notice clears itself), and management by groups of screens. Those three are what keep a deployment alive two years later.

Frequently asked

What councils ask

Three connected screens, brought into service in 2020 across different council buildings. The council chose the Premium plan, which covers multi-screen management and scheduling by time slot.

The council’s own communications team, from a browser. No design skills are needed: the built-in editor offers templates the team adapts, and the notice is sent from the same screen it was composed on.

No. E-MANAGER runs in a web browser, on any machine. That matters in a local authority, where installing software usually means a ticket with the IT team.

Yes, on a totem built for it: weatherproof housing, a high-brightness panel readable in daylight, and thermal regulation. It is run exactly like an indoor screen.

The what’s-on listing, council meetings, roadworks, service opening hours, market days, community groups, weather or safety warnings, and everyday practical information through the widgets (time, date, weather). Digital statutory display is handled separately, with its own retention rules.

It depends on the amount and on the country. Procurement rules set a threshold below which a public body can contract directly, and those thresholds change; a deployment of a few screens usually sits below them. Checking it is a matter for the authority’s own procurement team, which knows its internal limits.

A variable message sign shows scrolling text, often single-colour, on a few lines. A digital signage screen plays composed visuals, photographs and video, with a free layout. The two complement each other — the detail is covered on our local authorities page.

Going further

Other deployments

Every case study published on this site states the sector, the year and the size of the estate installed.

  • ✓GLS France — 111 screens at the end of every dock at the Paris Sud hub, wired to their yard management software.
  • ✓Europcar — 360 screens and tablets across rental branches, run from one central interface.
  • ✓Schindler — close to a hundred screens inside lift cars, at a manufacturer that resells the service to its own customers.

Three screens to start with?

A few minutes of demo are enough to see how a council composes a notice and puts it on screen the same day.