The city of Melle, a municipality in Lower Saxony with more than 48,000 residents, is recognized for its modern approach to city administration and citizen services. The local government manages a wide range of responsibilities: urban development, education, social care, environmental protection, cultural initiatives, municipal infrastructure, and economic support for the region.
In recent years, Melle has invested heavily in digital transformation, introducing online citizen services, modernizing internal administrative workflows, and improving the technological foundation that supports daily municipal operations. The administration is known for its commitment to transparency, efficiency, and service quality — regularly receiving positive recognition from residents for its well-organized city services and proactive, solutions-oriented governance.
As a city institution, the administration is committed to upholding the highest standards of data protection and operational integrity. The city's IT team continuously seeks to implement modern technologies that streamline workflows, enhance security, and support its employees in their daily tasks. This commitment led them to reevaluate their password management approach, seeking a solution that would meet their security requirements while remaining user-friendly for employees.
Location: Lower Saxony, Germany
Industry: City administration
Company size: 450+ employees
Challenge: Unified password management without security risks
The city administration of Melle recognized a need to improve credential security across employee workflows. Different departments relied on various password management solutions, with most using the one integrated into Microsoft Edge. This resulted in isolated systems with limited central oversight, no visibility into user actions, and inconsistent security standards across the organization.
Beyond security, the IT team wanted to simplify password management for employees. The city administration employs people with varying levels of technical proficiency, so ease of use was just as important as protection.
"That was especially important to us so that we wouldn't have an additional password, another hurdle for people. So really just their Windows password and then the PIN for the browser extension at the end of the day." — Andre Kahlen, system administrator
This meant finding a solution with LDAP support — allowing users to authenticate with their existing Windows credentials and eliminating an additional barrier to adoption. This led the IT team to make a strategic decision to evaluate and introduce a centrally managed, enterprise-grade password management solution.
The main objective was to find a platform that combined three core requirements:
- Security: high security that aligns with strict data protection regulations and internal security policies.
- Usability: exceptional user-friendliness with seamless integration into existing IT infrastructure.
- Control: simple, centralized administration that keeps data accessible while providing fast technical support.
The city of Melle required a service that could unify the workflows across all departments, establish transparent access management, and ensure secure password storage.
Solution: Building a resilient infrastructure
To select a password manager, the IT team conducted a thorough analysis of the available solutions on the market. After careful consideration, they chose Passwork for its security features, granular control, and user-friendly interface — all of which closely matched their criteria.
Passwork's ability to provide centralized control while still offering a secure space for users was beneficial to the IT team. The vault structure was also considered a deciding factor.
"We want to maintain control, since we assign many people, especially those outside of IT, to deal with passwords. One of the advantages of Passwork is centralized management."
This level of control was essential for the municipality, as administrators handle a vast amount of sensitive data and require protection that effectively prevents unauthorized access to confidential information.
The team successfully tested all the declared functions and analyzed database-level security. The decision was based on an intensive three- to four-month testing phase involving about eight members of the IT department. The entire Passwork implementation process, from initial selection to final implementation, took over a year.
Technical Integration
LDAP integration was essential to minimize user friction. After testing, the city administration deployed Passwork within its infrastructure with the following setup:
- LDAP integration for centralized user management based on Active Directory
- The self-hosted solution with an additional instance for employees with heightened security requirements in an isolated network segment
- Snapshot-based and classic backups to ensure data can be quickly restored in case of an incident
"We set up LDAP integration to centrally manage user accounts and permissions, which was highly important. We decided to split the solutions into several instances. Access is heavily restricted this way."
After the successful implementation, the IT team needed to structure the employees' work in the new system.
Organizing work with data in Passwork
The goal was to build a balanced and flexible system that combined control with the freedom of personal information space for employees. The IT team established a clear governance structure:
- Centralized administration — IT admins automatically granted access to all vaults to maintain control
- Personalized training on secure password export and import procedures to ensure safe data migration
- Onboarding sessions for each user during setup to build confidence and ensure smooth adoption
- Clear guidelines on what information belongs in shared organizational vaults and personal vaults
With Passwork, users gained the flexibility to create and organize vaults based on their workflow requirements.
User onboarding
During the rollout, the IT team discovered that centralized training sessions were ineffective — many employees found it challenging to absorb the information all at once. A new method was chosen instead: a personalized approach intended to encourage users to accept the product, use strong, generated passwords, share credentials securely, and learn to use Passwork effectively.
"Passwork adoption is getting very good: employees are taking to new features easily. There is a personal briefing for every user we set up. This also covers security requirements and guides how to effectively utilize the tool. Employees are already organizing their space to fit their structure, thinking about how to design vaults."
Staff always have access to user instructions, and the IT department provides ongoing support to address any questions that arise.
Result: Security and efficiency in workflows
After more than a year in use, the City of Melle remains highly satisfied with Passwork. The solution is actively used by office employees today. The following points were highlighted as particularly positive.
Unified secure space for data storage
The municipality has abandoned browser-based solutions: all passwords are now stored in a secure system with multi-level encryption. Access to them is strictly controlled and logged — this helps prevent leaks and enables incident investigation if necessary.
Positive user acceptance
Many employees have embraced the tool and are proactively thinking about how to structure organizational vaults.
Reliable customer support
The Passwork support team played an important role in the successful implementation and upgrade from version 6 to the recently released Passwork 7.
"Customer support has been excellent so far with its fast responses. I always have answers to my questions, always with the right scripts included or the right syntax I needed to enter, everything already prepared. Perfect."
The City of Melle plans to continue rolling out Passwork until all users are successfully onboarded. The IT team has begun systematically gathering feature requests to refine the system to meet the specific requirements of the city administration's IT infrastructure and to ensure it aligns with their operational needs.
Conclusion
Passwork has improved the internal security at the City of Melle by creating a reliable system for password management. Through careful evaluation and a security-focused implementation strategy, the deployment proceeded smoothly. A tailored onboarding approach drove high user adoption, while the platform's reliability and responsive technical support solidified its position as an essential tool in daily administrative operations.
Eirik Salmi
Eirik Salmi
Eirik Salmi
