Digital signage for town halls: keep residents informed on every screen
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.
Start 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.
The 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.
Regulatory 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.
At 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.
Queue management
Each visitor takes a ticket, their number shows on the lobby screen and a voice announcement calls the counter. Waiting becomes readable, and staff take back control of the flow. See queue management
Visitor book
Visitors and contractors sign themselves in on a kiosk, on the way in and on the way out. The register stays up to date, and the list of people on site is available at any moment. See the guest book
Room booking
Council chamber, community hall, rooms lent to local clubs: every space has its own schedule, readable on a small screen beside the door. See room booking
The 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.
What 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
The 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. The examples below come from the French library — the wording is what you change, the composition is what you keep.
Our references
Councils and authorities already broadcasting
From the rural village to the city centre, the same software scales to the number of screens — from a single display in a lobby to an estate spread across every public building.
+7,000
connected screens
+1,000
customer accounts
+130
distribution partners
+20
countries
Detailed projects, sector by sector, are gathered in our customer cases. To go further on the subject, read digitizing local authorities.
In practice
How a town hall screen is set up
Four steps, three of which are settled before the first broadcast.
The connection
One screen, one internet connection. The player sits behind the display and reaches out through the authority’s network, or through a 4G card, with no intrusion into your information system.
The E-MANAGER platform
Your online workspace, reached from a browser. Each department gets its own permissions: the library runs its screen, the communications office keeps control of the lobby.
The player: E-BOX or E-SOFT
E-BOX is a small HD, 4K or 8K player connected over HDMI. E-SOFT is the application embedded in the screen itself — Android TV, but also professional Samsung (Tizen) and LG (webOS) panels.
Broadcasting
Your content goes out to the screens you choose, with time slots and different playlists per building. A video wall stays in step thanks to master-slave synchronisation.
EMITY supports every screen manufacturer: see the list of compatible displays.
FAQ
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.
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