Introduction and Context
The Helsinki Data Strategy is part of the city’s broader Digitalisation Programme, approved in March 2019. The goal is to make Helsinki “the most functional city in the world” by leveraging data, artificial intelligence, and robotisation to improve public services and decision-making.
Vision
The data generated by Helsinki is the most usable and used city data in the world by 2025.
Objectives
The aim of the data strategy is to bring about the following four changes and benefits:
- Data is utilised to create a city that proactively responds to residents’ service needs on their terms
- Data-driven decision-making
- The City’s operations and resources are optimised with the help of data
- The sharing of data drives business and the utilisation of external resources
Principles
- The City has the right to use all of the data that its operations and services generate.
- The City’s shared master data, such as client data, is only recorded once.
- All data is accessible via APIs and in machine-readable format.
- All data can be utilised internally within the City across division boundaries and by municipally owned companies, unless restricted by legislation.
- The City utilises external data and shares its own data as openly as possible to promote the vitality of the city ecosystem.
- The lawful and ethical utilisation and sharing of data is facilitated and ensured though the processing of precedents.
- The City’s shared data and analytics platforms support and speed up the independent service provision of the City’s divisions.
- Data and analytics capabilities are developed based on the needs of the City’s divisions and concrete use cases.
- In accordance with MyData principles, clients can determine how the data collected about them is utilised.
Measures
- Assemble and procure of data and analytics platforms
- Establish corss-divisional working groups for data utilization, and data governance. Maintainance of the city’s data classification model.
- Provide citizens and residents with the services to transparently monitor and manage the processing of their personal data.
- Incorporate provisions into procurement contracts regarding data use, ethical algorithms, and the provision of APIs.
- Establish a data and analytics team under the City Executive Office’s Strategies Division to develop data and analytics capabilities.
Facts and Links
- Vision: The data generated by Helsinki is the most usable and used city data in the world by 2025.
- Strategy Horizon: 2021–2025