Digitalism Challenge course innovated solutions for practical implementation

This autumn, almost 100 Aalto students solved digital challenges presented by Helsinki Family Centres, Finnish Tax Administration and Nordea on the Digitalism Challenge course (#pschallenge18, Predictive Society). The task of interdisciplinary teams consisting of graduate students was to develop solutions within four weeks for challenges defined by the organisations in question.

At the final event held in Dipoli on 28 November, all 18 student teams presented their solutions, that is, nine application concepts for the Family Centres and nine for Nordea and Finnish Tax Administration. After the four-minute pitch presentations, representatives of the organisations had a chance to ask further questions about the solutions. The judges praised the solutions of various teams as visionary and excellent in terms of scalability and usability. The presentations were considered to represent a high standard.

Johanna Kotipelto from the Prime Minister's Office greeted students at the event. ‘Experimentation enables the discovery of innovative solutions for the development of society and services, and on this course, you have done that brilliantly’, she said.

With a ‘Family tree’ you can keep track of the whole family in different stages of life

Solutions created for the Family Centres were evaluated by a jury consisting of Chairman from Accenture's Health and Public Services unit Director Vesa Silfver, Professor of Practice at Aalto University Katariina Kemppainen, Helsinki Family and Social Services Director Maarit Sulavuori, Project Manager Anna-Kaisa Tukiala and Director of Family Services Hanna Viitala. The jury nominated the Digital Family Room application as the winning concept for the Family Centres.

Digital Family Room is a digital service for families. It is based on the concept of a ‘family tree’, which customers can use to manage issues involving the entire family in different life situations. The purpose of the application is to facilitate, for instance, the management of bookings and the search for services, as well as enable access to peer support and intelligent recommendations. The application’s event calendar allows customers to receive information on various services, support groups and events organised by the Family Centres. The team's objective was also to enable digital appointments.

The Digital Family Room team consisted of students with a major in Information and Service Management (ISM) Annika Erkkilä and Janne Hämäläinen, as well as exchange students from the School of Business Margarita Potekhina, and Rashmi Kamath from the EIT Digital Data Science programme at the School of Science.

Ankkuri platform enables systematic use of personal financial, social and healthcare data 

In addition to Silfver and Kemppainen, presentations for the Tax Administration and Nordea were assessed by Nordea’s Vice President of Digitalisation and Intelligent Automation Anna Metsäranta, Business Designer Fabien Fédy and Senior Advisor Jukka Kyhäräinen from Finnish Tax Administration. The jury selected the Ankkuri (Anchor) application as a winner of the solutions created for the Tax Administration and Nordea.

Ankkuri is a government-based platform, which provides people with an opportunity to control and make use their data ecosystem. It gathers financial and social information about life events of people living in Finland, helps them make decisions based on their own values, and gives smart advice. The platform collects data from both public and private organisations, and allows the user to control the data flow between the organizations.  

The Ankkuri team consisted of Information and Service Management (ISM) students Maria Agerskov and Samuel Sippola, and marketing student Daphne Wang from the School of Business, Kunj Beriwala from the Industrial Engineering and Management (IEM) Programme of the School of Science and Mirko Wittka from the Creative Sustainability Programme of the School of Arts, Design and Architecture.

Public sector digi-hackathon courses have been successful

'Faster development requires constant renewal. We want to offer a unique and practical development experience on this course of only six study credits. Cooperation with professionals from Accenture went smoothly on this course organised together for the fourth time. We are grateful for the courage of our client organisations to leap into this process and we are following the renewal of the public sector with interest. We have already agreed on further discussions about the development of a few applications with different stakeholders’, says teacher in charge of the course, Senior University Lecturer Johanna Bragge from the Department of Information and Service Management at the School of Business.

In addition to Bragge and Kemppainen, Aalto's coaching team consisted of Professor of Practice Esko Penttinen, doctoral candidate Sanna Tiilikainen and researchers from the School of Science Talayeh Aledavood and Matti Nelimarkka, as well as doctoral candidates Katrine Mahlamäki and Siddharth Rao.

‘This year's Digitalism Challenge course looked for concepts for the development of human-oriented and intelligent services. The finalists understood this way of thinking very well and I hope that the participating organisations will continue the development of these innovative concepts. Digitalism Challenge has evolved into a unique learning experience addressing societal challenges. We would like to thank Aalto University for the multi-annual cooperation in organising this hackathon course’, Vesa Silfver from Accenture summarises.

Further information:

Johanna Bragge
Senior University Lecturer, Information Systems Science
Aalto University
Department of Information and Service Management
+358 40 530 1032
[email protected]

Tuulia Timonen
Accenture
Health & Public Services
+358 40 715 2703
[email protected] 

Twitter: #pschallenge18