Information Society OULU Katriina Puhakka Director of Development Competitive regions - Shaping Best Practice Sheffield 9 and 10 October 2003 Information Society OULU Katriina Puhakka Director of Development

• A rapidly developing centre of growth in northern Europe • Centre of education in northern Finland • 6th largest city in Finland, with 125,000 inhabitants •  University of Oulu (15,350 students), Oulu Polytechnic (7,300 students), vocational institutes (about 6,000 students) • About 6,000 firms, average net growth 150 enterprises/year • The Silicon Valley of the North, location to Scandinavia’s oldest technology park • 12,000 jobs in the high-tech sector • Easily accessible

Population in Oulu and City Region, 1980 -2020

Oulu vision Oulu is a successful, magnetic and economically sound city Oulu and the surrounding region are in the centre of development of expertise and business in Northern Europe Oulu is a successful, magnetic and economically sound city Oulu is a good place to live in and has the most developed services in Finland, arising from the needs of its residents Oulu is a cooperative, nationally and internationally strong, influential city

Oulu Growth Agreement - Clusters Programme agreements Objective 2 programme Content production and media Bio -technology Information- technology Wellness- Environment BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME LOGISTICS-

Information Society Oulu Business companies University Northern Finland Polytechnics Oulu region Vocational institutes The Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities, various Ministries Council of Oulu Region, Employment and Economic Development Centre, Partner cities

Objectives Promote the Oulu information society development Utilize new technology in services offered by the city Provide diverse services for residents of Oulu, regardless of time, place or medium Renew service processes and structures Produce added value to organisation of city and customers

Network services Starting point: to unify all the forms and make them available in digital form Many-layered chain of decision making; network decreases bureaucracy Benefits of rationalisation: improves internal activity and helps improving the processes Challenges: changing the working processes , exploiting existing communications systems, co-operation between officials, electrical personal ID and signature

Mobile services Octopus-project enables developing and testing of mobile services Challenges: users have old mobile phones, mobile payments, marketing and easy use of mobile services, operator charges / cash flows

Mobile tool in the care of the elderly Concrete examples Mobile fishing permit, mobile tickets to swimming halls and theatre productions Mobile tool in the care of the elderly Mobile- and network services of libraries

Concrete examples Mobile fitness hall reservations Mobile information service system for young people (coming events on a distribution list) Mobile information system for water temperature at swimming places Reducing health care centre appointments made by phone

Budgets and resources 2002 - 2004 Coordination-project 2 people, budget 467 031 € Network services 2 people + 1 trainee, 859 369 € Oulu Smart City Card (1997- onwards) 2 people Mobile services

City card application set, Oct. 2000 Library October 2000 Spare time October 2000 Transportation for the elderly and the handicapped April 2001 Catering services October 2000 Access controll February 2001 Card loading point September 2000 September 2000 Staff card Electric forms using PKI 2001 2002 Banking services, on banks card June 2000 Summer 2000 Congress, Oulu Public phone, on banks card June 2000 Taxi 2003

Future challenges Descriptions and further development of service processes Compatibility of registers Electrical ID and signature Smooth service chains Compatibility of regional services Improving the capacity of the personnel of the city and the residents to utilize information technology Developing Intranet in the City organisation