In this builder spotlight, we talk to Jon Ramvi from Symfoni, whose 'Kompetansespor' solution, developed in collaboration with key Norwegian public agencies like the Directorate of Immigration (UDI), the University of Oslo (UiO), and the City of Oslo, has managed to streamline the immigration process to the point where it went from 9 months to only 3 days.
We’ve all heard nightmare stories about the bureaucratic processes involved in moving to a different country. Excitement to start a new part of your life, maybe a job or studies, quickly turns to dread when all of the paperwork starts coming in. This is exactly the problem that Symfoni is solving for Norway through their work on the 'Kompetansespor' pilot project.
“Are you aware of any other pilots of this scale going on right now?” Jon Ramvi from Symfoni asks, after showing me the impressive results of their most recent pilot where they completed 50 real immigrations with their digital identity wallet. And he's right. Even with the EUDI Wallet deadline nearing, the EU Large Scale Pilots well underway, and seemingly more interest than ever in implementing decentralized digital identity, other real-world pilots with actual end users are scarce. This upcoming year the Symfoni team is planning to onboard a much larger amount, all students from the EU/EAA that are coming to Oslo in August. It is very inspiring to see a company who is doing what others keep promising, showcasing the benefit of digital identity for end-users in a real-life setting.
Although the journey for Symfoni has been long, they are now finally seeing the results of their hard work. The Norwegian parliament has agreed on the importance of introducing schemes that cut processing times for work permits for "top talent" from countries inside, and outside, the EU/EEA. This political urgency stems directly from Norway's significant shortage of skilled labor and the intense global competition for talent, both critical factors as the country undergoes a major economic transition.
The reality for Norway is that the long processing times, and general difficulty of the process simply must be fixed. The 'Kompetansespor' project explores how solutions like Symfoni's align with the upcoming European digital identity framework, eIDAS 2.0, positioning Norway at the forefront of digital immigration processes. While the politicians discuss the issue, Jon Ramvi highlights the core technology's potential: “Digital wallet technology is a game-changer. This enables a more citizen-centric, transparent, and efficient data flow,” he explains, noting how it overcomes conventional limitations.
So what's this solution that manages to streamline a process from 9 months to 3 days? Symfoni has built a mobile solution where the entire Norwegian application for a residence permit based on a job offer or place of study, is condensed into a simple 6 step (mostly) digital process.
- Download your offer of employment
- Register passport information
- Pay application fee
- Send your application directly to the Norway Directorate of Immigration
- Attend your appointment with the police
- Receive your confirmation of completed registration, in the form of a reusable completed registration credential.
Attending an appointment with the police is the only step that remains in-person (for now), however, even this has been made much easier by incorporating it into the digital application flow.
What they’re building with Paradym
For their digital immigration solution, Symfoni used Paradym to implement both the issuance and verification flow. They set up the templates in Paradym, and access them from their solution with a simple API endpoint.
In addition, the Symfoni team re-used existing components from the open-source Paradym wallet, like the credential offer view. This way the identity specific flows were easy to implement fully, as both the UI and underlying code could be taken directly from Paradym.
The potential impact of the project is not difficult to imagine. Immigration to Norway has only increased over the last decades, and with the government now agreeing that tech talents are sorely needed, this doesn’t seem inclined to stop soon. The same issues are faced not only in Europe but across the world, so while the scaling started from an initial pilot with 9 researchers in 2023, to 50 successful immigrations last year, to a much larger number of students this August, the real scale might be too big to estimate.
To illustrate, a Google search for Norway immigration currently turns up countless ‘How to move to Norway in [2023, 2024, 2025...]’ guides, with many of them stating how complicated the process is. With the efforts of Symfoni, maybe the 2026 guides will simply state "get a job, download the Kompetansespor app, enjoy the trip".
This interview was held between Jon Ramvi (founder Symfoni) and Ana Goessens (co-founder Paradym & Animo Solutions) on April 3rd 2025. For further information on Symfoni you can reach out to Jon Ramvi and follow the company on LinkedIn. Do you want to revolutionize an industry like Symfoni is doing for immigration? Reach out to Ana or start building on Paradym’s free tier right now!
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