About

Summary

The Helsinki Region Infoshare project aims to make regional information quickly and easily accessible to all. The data may be used by citizens, businesses, universities, academies, research facilities or municipal administration. The data on offer is ready to be used freely at no cost.

The data published during the project is mainly statistical, giving a comprehensive and diverse outlook on different urban phenomena, such as living conditions, economics and well-being, employment and transport. A good proportion of the data material offered by the project is GIS based.

The project includes building a web service for fast and easy access to open data sources. Users can download information and use it in decision-making, utilise it in their applications, or develop entirely new services based on the information, to name just a few examples.

Goals in a nutshell

  • To develop an extensive network consisting of all those in the Helsinki region who are in possession of basic information pools and materials. The members of the network produce, maintain, share and develop the data pools in cooperation, following common guidelines.
  • To open up the data pools of the network for everyone. The data in the pools will also be ready to be further processed or utilised in IT applications. Data is available free of charge and in an easily usable form.
  • To build a web service through which the data can be easily found, downloaded and utilised. The web service is also used to encourage the producers and users of the data to cooperate more closely.
  • To pilot an open data activity model and its implications to both the producers and end users of the data. To learn by doing and sharing the learned lessons, too.

 

Project funding, execution and timetable

The project is funded by the cities of Espoo, Helsinki, Vantaa and Kauniainen, as well as the Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra. In addition, the Finnish Ministry of Finance has given the project a municipality cooperation grant.

The operative execution of the project is managed by a directive board formed by the funding and executive parties of the project, as well as City of Helsinki Urban Facts and Forum Virium Helsinki, the last being responsible particularly for the project planning, implementing sub-projects and coordination.

The project takes place during 2010 – 2013. The development of the project started at the beginning of 2010, and it was launched in June 2010. A testing environment for the web service was published in early 2011. After this, the project advanced according to user-based testing and learning. In 2012, the web service has on offer a wide range of data on Helsinki regional area and its localities. In 2013, the target is that opening data and operating the web service becomes part of municipalities normal operations.

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