Oulu find­ings from Digi­place ‑project

The city of Oulu took part in inter­na­tion­al Digi­place project dur­ing 2019–2022. Oulu´s aim in Digi­place project was to inte­grate user feed­back and cit­i­zen par­tic­i­pa­tion in the process of dig­i­tal ser­vice cre­ation and main­te­nance. To get there we need­ed tech­ni­cal tools for col­lect­ing and mon­i­tor­ing user expe­ri­ences. We also need­ed to encour­age oth­er ser­vice units thor­ough the city to take the meth­ods in use. In addi­tion to bet­ter tech­ni­cal solu­tions, we need­ed more con­tacts with cit­i­zens and cit­i­zen orga­ni­za­tions. Not only to under­stand the dif­fer­ent needs of user groups, but also to ensure bet­ter sup­port for cit­i­zens who have trou­ble using the ser­vices. Based on all this, we have rec­og­nized four actions.

Dur­ing Urbact Digi­Place we made small steps (Small Scale Action or SSAs) to clar­i­fy our plan with­in each action. Based on the results of SSA we out­lined an action table for the future. We had the fol­low­ing find­ings dur­ing the Digi­place project.

Oulu area has a good dig­i­tal ecosys­tem and dig­i­tal solu­tions are being increas­ing­ly imple­ment­ed to ser­vices, but we need to get cit­i­zens more involved in the process. It is impor­tant to con­tin­ue search­ing for tools that can enable par­tic­i­pa­tion and make feed­back eas­i­er to give. Mon­i­tor­ing user sat­is­fac­tion and increas­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion is in many cas­es eas­i­est and most effi­cient to achieve trough dig­i­tal tools.

We need to remem­ber the role of dig­i­tal­iza­tion though: that it is a tool, not an intrin­sic goal. It is impor­tant to keep a crit­i­cal mind­set and eval­u­ate which ser­vice chan­nel serves the cus­tomers’ needs best in a par­tic­u­lar sit­u­a­tion. To cre­ate acces­si­ble and fit­ting ser­vices, we need to hear the users’ feed­back and ide­al­ly co-cre­ate ser­vices to an extent. More­over, it is impor­tant to rec­og­nize that users are not a sin­gle coher­ent group but con­sist of dif­fer­ent pref­er­ences and lev­els of abil­i­ty. Active par­tic­i­pa­tion process is need­ed to ensure that all dif­fer­ent needs are met. This way we can devel­op bet­ter dig­i­tal ser­vices. Well designed and devel­oped dig­i­tal ser­vices also help us opti­mize our resources so that we are still able to pro­vide more tra­di­tion­al ser­vice chan­nels to groups that face chal­lenges with dig­i­tal ser­vices or have par­tic­u­lar­ly com­pli­cat­ed prob­lems to deal with. 

Our action plan is very much about a cul­tur­al change in the orga­ni­za­tion: Our vision is to make the ser­vice devel­op­ment process more cit­i­zen-cen­tric and to include cit­i­zen par­tic­i­pa­tion. In addi­tion, we aim to fade lines between ser­vice units and cre­ate more coop­er­a­tion to cre­ate more coher­ence in the ser­vice struc­ture from the cus­tomers’ point of view. To extend this, we also need to net­work with actors and ser­vice providers out­side of the city orga­ni­za­tion.

The cul­tur­al change is grad­ual, and in our action plan we have defined impor­tant steps towards it. The city has good premis­es for this devel­op­ment: we have a new cross-gov­ern­men­tal devel­op­ment mod­el for cus­tomer ser­vice in place, and an active­ly devel­op­ing cen­tral cus­tomer ser­vice unit that can act as a test bed and advo­cate for good prac­tices. More­over, we have chan­nels to con­nect com­pa­nies with cit­i­zen par­tic­i­pa­tion. The dig­i­tal ecosys­tem in the city is already strong, and trough bet­ter col­lab­o­ra­tion between city units and com­pa­nies, we can bring com­pa­nies and cit­i­zens clos­er togeth­er when look­ing for devel­op­ment solu­tions. 

Inclu­sion and dig­i­tal­iza­tion are both big and cur­rent themes in city plan­ning and poli­cies. The inte­grat­ed action plan for cit­i­zen-cen­tric dig­i­tal ser­vice devel­op­ment is part of impor­tant trends that Oulu needs to be a part of.

Oulu´s results can be read in more detail from “URBACT Digi­Place Inte­grat­ed Action Plan in Oulu, Fin­land”

Read more about URBACT Digi­Place — Inte­grat­ed Action Plan in Oulu, Fin­land (pdf file)