Sector · Town halls, local authorities, public services
Digital signage for town halls: keep residents informed on every screen
Council information, right when a resident reads it.
A notice to publish, swimming pool hours that change, a neighbourhood meeting moved to next week: local information shifts every single day. With EMITY you update it from a browser, and it appears straight away in the town hall lobby, on the forecourt, at the library and in the sports centre.
The experiences involved
Six EMITY experiences, one platform from the forecourt to every council facility.
01Start with the definition
Digital signage in a town hall, in practical terms
The term sounds technical. The principle comes down to three things: screens, an internet connection, and one single place to drive them from.
A noticeboard that updates itself
A digital signage screen takes the place of the cork noticeboard and the sheets pinned to it. The content itself lives in an online platform, E-MANAGER. You compose a poster there, you pick the screens that will carry it, and you publish. A few seconds later, the whole authority sees it.
- ✓Indoor and outdoor screens, across every one of your buildings
- ✓Content composed in a browser, with no software to install
- ✓A correction visible within seconds across the entire estate
- ✓A different playlist depending on the building, the hour or the day
The difference with paper fits in one sentence: a wrong date is fixed in three clicks from a desk, and no member of staff has to walk round the buildings unpinning posters.
02The journey
From the forecourt to the facilities: six moments worth equipping
Here is the route of a resident with something to sort out, followed as they live it: they arrive outside the town hall, they look for an official notice, they come through the door, they wait their turn. At every step the screen answers one precise question — and the last one is no longer for them, but for your staff.
The six screens do not all arrive at once.
Most councils start with the forecourt and the statutory notices — the two that work even when the building is closed — then equip the lobby and the facilities. The platform is the same from the first screen to the last.
03Town halls, local authorities and public services
Your statutory notices,
without the cork boards.
Orders, council decisions, public inquiries, service opening hours: a council posts a great deal, and often on boards nobody looks at any more.
A dull notice board ends up being ignored.
The statutory display module takes your mandatory documents digital and makes them available at any time on a touch screen. Every publication is time-stamped and scheduled. Updates are instant and remote.
You also get consultation statistics: at last you know what residents come looking for.
- ✓E-paper compatible: a reconfigurable display with no cable and no recharging for five years
- ✓Self-service touch kiosks: wayfinding and formalities, on their own
- ✓Queue management: one ticket, one desk, a call shown on screen at the reception desks
- ✓2D mapping: the interactive map guides residents from the kiosk
- ✓Servers hosted in France (OVH): the authority’s data stays sovereign
04Regulatory context
Statutory notices, published on screen
Going digital with statutory publication is the first reason a town hall turns to screens. Here is what the rules ask for, and what a kiosk adds to them.
What the 2021 French reform changed
EMITY is a French software company, and its statutory display module was built around French law. In France, ordinance no. 2021-1310 and decree no. 2021-1311 of 7 October 2021 reformed how local authorities publish their acts. Since they took effect on 1 July 2022, electronic publication is the default method. Paper display is no longer the rule.
- ✓Above 3,500 inhabitants, the authority and its groupings must publish electronically
- ✓Below that threshold, councils and inter-municipal bodies keep the choice, set out in an express resolution
- ✓Paper is still owed to anyone who asks for it: going digital does not remove that duty
- ✓Outside France, the same module carries whatever statutory notices your own rules require
This is exactly where a freely accessible screen earns its place: it puts the information back within reach of residents who would never look it up on a website. The full framework, retention periods and accepted formats are set out on the legal display management page.
05The uses
What a local authority puts on its screens
Six families of information cover most of what an authority broadcasts. They are not meant for the same people, and that is what decides which screen they appear on.
06At the front desk
Managing queues and visitors at the town hall front desk
On the first day of term, or during a rush on identity documents, the lobby fills up. Three modules of the same platform then take over from the information screen.
07What sets us apart
Outdoor screens, and electronic ink for remote sites
Communicating outdoors calls for different hardware from a lobby. Two answers, depending on whether the display point has power or not.
Full sunlight first, then the spots with no power
Outdoors, the first question is light: a living-room television becomes unreadable as soon as the sun hits it. High-brightness panels hold up in broad daylight, and their backlight adjusts as night falls so as not to dazzle the neighbours.
That leaves the spots far from a power socket: the edge of a village, the start of a footpath, a bus shelter. EMITY is the first French software company to support electronic ink, with E-PAPER.
- ✓Zero consumption once the image is displayed: the screen only draws power when the content changes
- ✓Up to 5 years of battery life
- ✓Readable in full sunlight, exactly like a paper poster
- ✓A concrete argument for an authority’s energy reduction plan
08The layouts
Ready-made posters, in the authority’s own colours
A local authority’s communications office rarely includes a full-time designer. The template library therefore does most of the work: the text is replaced, the layout holds. In the examples below, the wording is what you change and the composition is what you keep.
The built-in editor is enough, in most cases. Every layout is edited straight inside EMITY’s built-in editor: the text, the photograph, the colours and the authority’s crest are changed inside the platform itself, with no third-party software to install and no extra account to create. And if your teams already work with Canva or Adobe Express, their artwork feeds straight onto the screens.
10In practice
How a town hall screen is set up
Four steps, three of which are settled before the first broadcast.
The list of compatible displays.
EMITY supports every screen manufacturer: see the list of compatible displays.
11Your data, protected
IT security
is our priority.
For a public buyer as for an IT department, it is often the first question asked before a screen is connected to the council network. Here is the answer, measure by measure, and the deployment model that suits you.
More than 10,000 hours of development devoted to security
The data from your screens, your visitors and your users stays in France, on infrastructure we control. Development is done in-house: no critical component is outsourced.
- Hosting in France (OVH) and GDPR compliance across all modules
- ISO 27001 compliant, certification targeted for 2026
- Two-factor authentication (MFA) from the Premium plan, SSO with your directory on the Excellence plan
- Regular penetration tests: anticipating threats rather than discovering them
- Security assurance and business continuity plans: security, service continuity, playback maintained without internet
Three ways to deploy the platform:
- As SaaS, hosted by us;
- On your own servers (on-premise) when your policy requires it;
- Or hybrid, with management on our side and data on yours.
12FAQ
Frequently asked questions about digital signage in local authorities
Try digital signage in your own town hall
Compose your first poster, broadcast it on a lobby screen, and see what it changes for residents. Three-month free trial, full version, no commitment.
✓ +1,000 EMITY customer accounts✓ Every manufacturer supported✓ Certified reseller in your area✓ Technical support included
