The MyServices application created for the Population Register Centre selected as the best

In spring 2016 Aalto University and Accenture collaborated to arrange a multidisciplinary course in which 17 interdisciplinary and international student teams tackled digitalisation challenges for the Finnish Tax Administration, Population Register Centre (PRC), and the Hospital District of Helsinki and Uusimaa (HUS). The organisations asked the students to develop solutions that would make it easier to use their services and increase internet and mobile service use.

The winning MyServices solution has a customer focus

The three finalists selected at the end of April presented their solutions in the main hall of ValtioExpo on 17 May. More than 1 500 state public administration experts and exhibitor representatives attended this event. Following the presentations, a jury made up of Director General of the State Treasury Timo Laitinen, Foodora Finland's CEO Ville Vasaramäki, Accenture Digital Nordic Managing Director Kari Kaario and Fjord's Service Design Director Teemu Äijälä, chose the MyServices application designed for the Population Register Centre as the winning concept.

MyServices makes it possible to find all information related to an individual in the same application. The customer is the focus of the service, and the application notifies the user what information should be entered in the PRC systems and when the user should deal with it. This can include vaccination boosters and reporting information related to the birth of a child. The members of the winning team were Lauri Ikonen, Anna Pyyluoma, Linh Tamminen and Phuong Vo.

Development Manager Pekka Rehn from the Population Register Centre says that PRC's goal for the course was to obtain new innovations and fresh operating methods to support a customer-centred approach. "The Hackathon work method met these expectations completely. I'm also very pleased that the winning team was able to break down the silos that exist between private and public sector organisations and focus on a national service. A student is already applying his service design methods and tools at the PRC."

" In my opinion, the best part of the course was working in an interdisciplinary group. When I take courses in my major, members of the groups all tend to think in the same manner. The skills of the people in this group were very complementary. The coaching meetings with the customer were the most beneficial. They provided us with a lot of in-depth information and I think this made our concepts even more relevant for the customer. ValtioExpo was also a great experience," summarises Anna Pyyluoma, a student in the School of Arts, Design and Architecture. 

The team that developed solutions for HUS presented a concept called HUSideas at ValtioExpo. Valentina Arrieta, Zhenzhen Gu and Jenni Haavisto produceda practical solution that allows HUS to collect ideas to improve the service experience. The HUS team received the prize for best presentation.

The Tax Learning Center application was selected as the best solution designed for the Finnish Tax Administration. It improves the Tax Administration's productivity by teaching certain groups of citizens how, for example, to use electronic tax card services. The team of Davide Comuzzi, Lap Duong, Marko Pelgonen and Shao Yufang, received an honourable mention for theapplicability of their idea.

The public service digitalisation Hackathon will continue next autumn

" All of the teams performed very well in this demanding course. It's wonderful to be able to  offer Aalto students new forms of learning and simultaneously produce practical and relevant solutions," explains Professor of Practice Katariina Kemppainen.

" I'm very happy to hear representatives of the customer organisations describe many of the solutions as creative and intelligent and the presentations as high quality," continues Kemppainen.

The Department of Information and Service Economy will also offer a Hackathon entity as a Capstone course in autumn 2016. Accenture will participate in implementing that course as well, and the participating  public sector organisations are being recruited at this time. Senior University Lecturer Johanna Bragge will be the teacher-in-charge for that course.

Further information:

Katariina Kemppainen
Professor of Practice
+358 50 486 9858
[email protected]

Johanna Bragge
Senior University Lecturer
+358 40 5301 032
[email protected]