Turku, Espoo to launch co-op to develop ability to use info securely

The cities of Turku and Espoo are starting to develop municipalities’ ability to implement utilisation of information and knowledge management securely, said the City of Turku in a press release on Wednesday.

The goal is to create tools and operating models that are applicable to all municipalities and serve as support for municipalities in their digitalisation processes.

Cities have a growing interest and increasingly more opportunities to develop their services by utilising data. In previous projects, such as the ‘City as MyData Operator’ project, a large number of use cases have been identified where the effectiveness of services could be improved by utilising cities’ existing data in new way.

At the moment, this potential often remains unutilised in municipalities, as their abilities in terms of data protection and information security are not yet at the level required by the implementation. At the same time, the changing and constantly specifying legislation challenges the municipalities’ ability to react proactively to the changes and opportunities brought along by digitalisation.

The Secure Information Project, a joint project by the cities of Turku and Espoo, will set out to build tools to support strategic, tactical and operational level management.

The Ministry of Finance has granted about €700,000 in funding for the project. The project will be divided into four project packages to be implemented in cooperation between Turku and Espoo. The project will continue throughout 2022 and end in March 2023.

The project will be based on a study on the current state of legislation, conducted in cooperation with the University of Turku. In order to support management and development at the strategic level, Espoo will implement as subproject the framework for utilising information safely. At a later stage of the project, an operating model for using information securely will be created for tactical and operational level as well as a guide, and these will be validated using selected case examples.