Challenge: Enhancing the Impact of Public Services

17.1.2025 | Forum Virium Helsinki

FinEst Twins -project organises a mini-pilot programme targeted at tackling smart city related challenges. Its six focus areas: data, mobility, smart governance, clean energy transition, built environment, and health & wellbeing. The call is open until March 17, 2025 at 16:00 (EET).

Focus Area: Smart Governance

Forum Virium Helsinki announces the opening of a call for the second round of innovative pilots as part of the FinEst Twins project. The smart governance challenge of the programme is Enhancing the Impact of Public Services Through Customer Experience Management: Exploring New Ways to Identify Touchpoints in a Large Public Organization Using Available Data.

Pilot host: The City of Helsinki Culture and Leisure Division (KUVA) and Helsinki Youth Unit

We seek innovative solutions for a strategic, customer-centric, and data-driven approach to improving public services. The pilot focuses on strengthening the impact of youth work by identifying and analyzing customer touchpoints, making services more customer-oriented and effective. This process leverages available data to enhance customer experience management in a large public organization.

The City of Helsinki’s Culture and Leisure services provide over 20 million experiences every year − a wide range of opportunities for cultural experiences, physical activities, and recreational services. These include libraries, museums, theaters, youth services, sports facilities, and outdoor recreation areas.

The Culture and Leisure Division’s Youth unit provides diverse opportunities for young people to participate, develop skills, and engage in meaningful activities. The services include youth centers, digital youth work, cultural and sports activities, employment and entrepreneurship support, as well as outreach and special youth work.

The offered solution will be piloted within the Youth unit, serving as a model for potential future implementation across the division.

Apply here to this challenge after the application period opens on 17 February at 12:00 (EET).

Key elements of the challenge

Enhancing the impact of public services: The aim is to improve services so that they better meet citizens’ needs and deliver more effective outcomes.
Customer experience management: Systematic management and development of customer experience in the public sector to ensure services are accessible, efficient, and user-friendly.
Exploring new ways to identify touchpoints: Efforts are made to recognize all situations and channels where citizens interact with public services (e.g., online platforms, physical service points, call centers, mobile apps, public events, etc.).
Utilizing available data: The organization leverages existing information, such as customer feedback, service interaction analysis, registry data, or other data sources, to identify and improve touchpoints.

The Challenge refers to the use of data in leading and developing service management. In practice, it means that decision-making, service offering design, and resource allocation are based on analyzed customer data and service descriptions. The goal is to provide a customer experience that meets the needs.

Minimum requirements

The expected output is a digital solution that gathers information from various sources and adapts flexibly to different information needs. The offered solution must develop a structured summary and a comprehensive view of the organization’s service and customer interaction channels, including their contact points with customers. These channels include, but are not limited to, customer service points, service phone numbers, email addresses, online forms, and digital services. Additionally, the view must include relevant details about each service, such as the nature of the service provided, service hours, and target groups. As a result, the digital solution:

provides information in clear, structured, presentable and in an easily manageable format. The compiled data must also be available in a widely used file format (e.g., CSV, Excel) to ensure accessibility and usability.

should identify possible inconsistencies, contradictions, gaps, or other areas requiring improvement for better customer experience. Best practices and effective solutions can also be identified.

It is a significant plus if the compiled data can be integrated with existing qualitative sources (e.g., customer feedback, surveys, and various data collection efforts) to provide a more comprehensive analysis and uncover opportunities for enhancing the customer experience.

We seek a scalable solution that can be replicated as data evolves and data sources change, and that can be adapted for use by other parts of organizations. If the proposed solution and outcomes in the pilot phase demonstrate exceptional effectiveness, we are keen to implement the approach more broadly within our organization.

Background information

The services of the City of Helsinki are arranged by the central administration and four divisions on Education, Urban Environment, Social Services, Health Care and Rescue Services and Culture and Leisure. The Culture and Leisure Division maintains and improves the opportunities of Helsinki residents of different ages for mental and physical wellbeing, culture and active citizenship, and supports the vitality of Helsinki. It provides yearly over 25 million experiences for example, in 38 libraries, 2 mobile libraries, 8 cultural centres, 5 museums, 70 youth spaces, 800 sports facilities, 4,000 boat berths and 150 outdoor gyms.

The Division is divided into four different Units: Library, Culture, Sports, Youth and Shared Services. One of the Culture and Leisure Division’s focus areas over the years 2024-2025 is to improve the vitality of operations through service network planning. This is to make sure that services are provided in the right place, in the right way and proportionately to the need for services. Another parallel project connected to this challenge focuses on developing customer service from an organization-centric to a customer-centric approach.

This challenge is linked to the service network planning and improving the quality of customer service. The challenge is coordinated from the Development and Digitalisation Services and piloted within the The Culture and Leisure Division’s Youth unit. Artificial intelligence (AI) is changing how also public organisations understand their customers. We would like to enhance our understanding of how this powerful technology can quickly analyse large amounts of customer data available from different sources. We would be interested to see if with the help of AI, it would be possible to map the customer touchpoints and gain new useful insights.

The data available to the Youth Work Unit is divided into open and closed data, the latter of which cannot be shared with third parties. Customer feedback can be anonymized, and this solution aims to explore its potential use as a data resource. Additionally, there is region-specific data, such as statistics, which would be interesting to combine with the data collected by youth work itself on available services and their users.

Examples of open data sources available: (Note, some only available in Finnish)

Customer and feedback data use is subject to limitations, and utilisation of the data will be explored during the pilot.

Budget

15,000€ (VAT 0%) for one (1) solution. The budget can be used to cover costs related to testing and development of the solution.

Evaluation and selection process

Interested parties are requested to submit their proposals including their approach, methodology, and experience in handling similar projects. After the call ends, submitted proposals will be screened based on the general evaluation criteria and two (2) best solutions will be invited to a remote live event taking place on 24.3.2025. After the online event, the jury can make a final decision based on the general evaluation criteria. The evaluation and selection process will be as follows:

Initial screening of proposals for completeness and adherence to submission guidelines.
Technical review by a jury.
Shortlisting of two (2) top proposals based on the general evaluation criteria.
Inviting shortlisted proposals to an online event taking place on 24.3.2025, where the jury has a possibility to ask questions based on a presentation. Presentation should include the same information than the original proposal and additional information for clarification if needed.
Final selection based on the general evaluation criteria following the evaluation process of the open call.

Tenders for focus area smart governance are submitted using this specific form. In addition to filling in the form, each Bidder can submit a maximum of four (4) other attachments supporting their tender. Please note that in this focus area it is not mandatory to submit any attachments.

Forum Virium Helsinki, The FinEst Twins project’s experts and the selected members from each pilot host organisations will evaluate the tenders submitted by the deadline and select the best tenders based on scoring. The final selection in each challenge is made based on the general evaluation criteria. All participants in the tender competition will be notified of the results. The procuring entity has the right to decide not to carry out the procurement, considering factors such as the total funding available or the quality of the tenders submitted.

Order of precedence:

1. The information provided on the form

2. The information presented in the attachments to the tender

3. The information provided in the potential online event

Materials and information provided outside the form, its attachments, or the online event will not be considered as part of the tender.

General Evaluation Process

For the purpose of evaluation, tenders submitted will be evaluated based on the following quality criteria in accordance with the specified weightings: 1) feasibility (40 %), 2) novelty and innovativeness (30 %), 3) impact and sustainability (20 %), and 4) scalability (10 %). The maximum number of points is 100. Each challenge has a fixed price, which means that the price is not an evaluation criteria.

Each evaluation criterion is scored on a scale of 0–3 points. The maximum total score that a tender can receive is 100 points.

The scoring will be evaluated accordingly:

3 points: The criterion is met excellently.
2 points: The criterion is well met.
1 point: The criterion has been taken into account to some extent.
0 points: The criterion has been taken into account weakly or not at all.

General Evaluation Criteria

1. Feasibility, weight 40 % (0-21p equals max. 40 points)

Equivalency: The proposal meets the specific challenge description. (0-3p)
Clarity of the tender: The description of measures, goals, timetables and resources shows that the solution can be implemented in a high-quality and safe manner, within the agreed timeframe and at the location specified in the invitation to tender. (0-3p)
Technical feasibility: The solution can be realistically implemented with current technology/data/resources available. (0-3p)
Competence: The Bidder demonstrates that they have sufficient competence and resources to implement the service. Competence of the personnel assigned for the pilot project, e.g. CVs or other characterisations and support material. (0-3p)
Restrictions: The Bidder has no limitations (e.g. policy issues, competitive setting, or other) to work in collaboration with the pilot hosts, stakeholders, and other operators being involved in the pilot programme. (0-3p)
Economic viability: The solution is economically viable. Consider development costs, operating costs, and potential return on investment. (0-3p)
Market viability: The solution has a market fit. (0-3p)

2. Novelty and innovativeness, weight 30 % (0-9p equals max. 30 points)

Novelty: The solution is new to the industry or to the specific area it targets. (0-3p)
Innovative qualities: The solution has innovative qualities which bring value for the challenge it solves. (Evaluation is carried out based on the personal competence and general and special know-how of the members of the evaluation panel selected by the procuring entity) (0-3p)
Degree of change: The pilot project introduces more disruptive innovations than incremental improvements like new practices/solutions/perspectives compared to the existing similar solutions. (0-3p)

3. Impact and sustainability, weight 20 % (0-9p equals max. 20 points)

Comprehensibility: The intended impact of the service and the method to verify the impact are described clearly. (0-3p)
Positive impact: The solution demonstrates a clear positive impact on solving the identified challenge. (0-3p)
User needs: The solution addresses a real need or solves a challenge. Innovations that are problem-driven are more likely to be successful. (0-3p)

4. Scalability, weight 10 % (0-9p equals max. 10 points)

Replicability: The service can be replicated or reproduced in another environment. (0-3p)
Scalability: The Bidder demonstrates that their solution has sufficient possibilities to be beneficial for wider usage (e.g. different audience or user groups, more organisations, other countries, or other factors) than only during the specified 6 month pilot period. (0-3p)
Business value: The solution offers potential for new business. (0-3p)

Each criterion will be evaluated as a whole. Points will be awarded at a minimum interval of 0-100 points and expressed to 2 decimal places. Tenders evaluated to be of equal value may receive the same score. In a situation where multiple tenders receive the same total score, the deciding factor will be the highest score of the criteria starting from the first criteria of the top category feasibility to the last criteria of the last category in a numerical order.

The offered solution will be piloted within the Youth Unit, serving as a model for potential future implementation across the division.

About KUVA and Helsinki Youth Services

The City of Helsinki’s Culture and Leisure services provide over 25 million experiences every year − a wide range of opportunities for cultural experiences,

physical activities, and recreational services. These include libraries, museums, theaters, youth services, sports facilities, and outdoor recreation areas.

Helsinki Youth Unit provides diverse opportunities for young people to participate, develop skills, and engage in meaningful activities. The services include youth centers, digital youth work, cultural and sports activities, employment and entrepreneurship support, as well as outreach and special youth work.

The Youth Unit consists of three services: Eastern Youth Work is responsible for youth work in the eastern and southeastern parts of the city and for supporting youth organisations and youth activities. Western Youth Work takes care of youth work in the southern and western parts of the city and Swedish-speaking youth work. Northern Youth Work is responsible for youth work in the northern and northeastern parts of the city and for the national development of digital youth work. Youth Unit provides services with a wide range in forty youth centres and other facilities around the city. Other facilities are, for example, an urban event venue, two skate parks, six course and camp centres, four engine parks and a domestic animal farm. The Youth Unit has a permanent staff of over 400 employees.

Support provided during the pilot period

The contact person from the City of Helsinki Culture and Leisure Division for the pilot is the project manager of the customer service development project. Meetings with the contact person occur every two weeks during the pilot period.

In case of any questions, please contact the organizer satu.reijonen@forumvirium.fi.