The Digital Agenda of Espoo: promoting the human centric and sustainable digital services of the future

Digital services are having an increasingly larger impact on cities worldwide. The city of Espoo, Finland is no exception in that regard. Their digital agenda, a program that promotes digital service development via cocreation and experimenting, and how it puts user needs at the centre of these services, is something we can all learn from. Development manager at the City of Espoo Valia Wistuba tells all.

Valia has been working for the City of Espoo since 2013, after having had different roles in a variety of companies, such as internationally renowned companies like Deloitte and Nokia. Her current role is at the Mayor’s Office, in digital services development and knowledge management, as a program manager. She leads the Espoo Digital Agenda Initiative.

Espoo’s Digital Agenda Initiative

“Our aim with the program is to share a comprehensive approach to digital service development. We try to map needs, requirements, challenges and opportunities in Espoo via the program”, says Valia. Part of the program also involves reflecting on useful approaches and tools that can be utilized in innovations and transformation cases. Another part is having an open discussion on what innovations mean in practice, having a human centred approach.

Catering to a changing world and population

Like many cities, Espoo is growing, diversifying and ageing. These changes combined with technological developments, increase the need for other services. “As the need for services grows and the world changes, the digitalization of services and new technologies make everyday life easier.” It does mean addressing a wide range of challenges, like:

• prevent the social exclusion of young people;
• take care of employment and integration;
• ensure multilingual, accessible and smooth services;
• create a functional and smart urban environment and take climate action; and
• attract investments, increase tax revenues and ensure that companies stay in Espoo.

Residents and customers expect services that are independent of time, location and language. “In Espoo, everyday life runs smoothly with targeted and proactive digital services regardless of time and place. Digital services complement and enhance the city’s services and consider the diverse needs of residents and customers. We also invest in a good digital employee experience with tools suitable for the job and automated and intelligent processes.”

Digital services improve the vitality of the urban community. Through digitalization, Espoo responsibly accelerates the ecological, social, economic and cultural sustainable development of the city. Thus Espoo’s Digital Agenda is a strategic tool to assess future solutions for multiple needs.

Digital Agenda 3.0: experimenting with the Espoo community

Espoo’s Digital Agenda 3.0, also known as Digiagenda 3.0, is an experimental program that promotes:

• digitalization of municipal services;
• the use of new technologies and ways of working;
• creating smooth and versatile services;
• inclusion and digital equality; and
• productivity and cost-effectiveness of services.

“Experimental activities are one of the ways in which Espoo responds to the challenges and changes of the urban community. The experiments produce valuable information and help identify solutions that can be utilized in several different services. We strengthen the culture of experimentation and develop the city. We invite residents and customers, organizations, companies and educational institutions to participate.”

Impact of Espoo’s digital agenda

The digital agenda has an impact on several topics, for the city itself, as well as the people working for the municipality. For the latter, “the program provides learnings and has had an impact on competence and process development, procurement planning and on the wellbeing of our staff to be able to participate in developing digital services that affect their work and daily operations.”

For companies and partners, the experiments provide valuable lessons for product and service development as well as a valuable reference. “And finally, residents and customers have the opportunity to participate in experiments and influence the development of future services.” Services that they will ultimately use. Thus, they contribute to services they will use themselves. “We’re actually creating services with residents.”

Evaluating experiments

Espoo has created a framework to evaluate experiments. The city categorizes different experiment forms and places them on a matrix. This is part of the program outline to reflect on approaches and tools. These are the different ways of experimenting:

Exploratory experiment

An experiment in which it is not known exactly which service(s) or functions the solution will work for at the beginning of the experiment or the functional concept being tested/developed. You can’t set specific goals in advance. You end up somewhere.

A well-defined experiment

An experiment in which it is known exactly for which service or function the solution will be tested at the beginning of the experiment, or in the preliminary concept it is known what will be tested. Clear objectives have been defined in the well-defined development.

Small transformation

The experiment involves the digitalization of a service or process and the utilization of new technology, but not a major functional change.

Mayor transformation

The experiment involves the digitalization of a service or process and the utilization of new technology and a large, radical functional change.

User centricity in practice

As previously implicated, a smooth Espoo is created by experimenting. A big part of this experimentation is including residents, people in the experimenting process. Espoo has done this via several cases, like the digitalization of worldview education material, a Finnish language proficiency online test, and promoting recruitment and onboarding with gaming. Valia zooms in on the last case. “In a nutshell Espoo’s property management needs a solution that facilitates property managers’ recruitment. The experiment will investigate whether a game-like application can enhance orientation and strengthen employer image. The 2 outputs of the experiment, the games, familiarise you with the work tasks of the property manager and are tailored and free of charge for the participants in the experiment. The trial is being carried out for the entirety of 2024 in cooperation with Espoo’s Premises Department (Espoo Tilapalvelut), city experts and Virtual Dawn.

The main takeaway for Valia is to encourage everyone to co-create by experimenting and working together. “The modern city is formed by involving all parties in the development of new (digital) services, and by taking the time and effort to experiment, together.”