HiQ MAINTAINS AND DEVELOPS OPEN DATA SERVICE IN THE HELSINKI REGION
HiQ helps the City of Helsinki Urban Facts with maintenance and development of the Helsinki Region Infoshare (HRI) service that offers open public data. HiQ will ensure that opening and utilising public data resources in the HRI service is as easy as possible.
Open data refers to public data sets that have been opened as raw data for anyone to use: easily and free of charge.
“The Finnish government and municipalities produce large amounts of top-quality data that is also useful outside of the administration. The HRI service is based on the idea that open public data increases transparency, while creating new services and jobs in the region. Open data simplifies life for all of us,” says Asta Manninen, Director of City of Helsinki Urban Facts department.
The HRI service was started by the cities in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area in 2011 and it already includes over 1,000 sets of regional data covering a variety of topics, from public transport schedules to historic maps. App developers have already used this data to build commercial applications, such as the awarded Blindsquare app that simplifies navigation for the visually impaired.
The service was also acknowledged internationally thanks to the public API to the document data in the City of Helsinki’s digital decision-making system (Ahjo). Due to this introduction, the HRI service received the European Prize for Innovation in Public Administration.
“Only a fraction of the public data sets of the region have been opened and the active phase is just on-going. In addition to opening data, we also need to promote the utilisation of HRI service. To do this we chose a partner who can develop the HRI service towards a more user-oriented direction. HiQ shares our vision, and we can trust their expertise”, says Project Manager Tanja Lahti from City of Helsinki Urban Facts.
“HRI is a great example of how IT can simplify the lives of thousands of people and create new business at the same time. We believe that the use of open data services will increase, and we are proud to be able to participate in the development at its core”, says Jukka Rautio, Managing Director for HiQ Finland.
For more information, please contact:
Jukka Rautio, Managing Director, HiQ Finland, tel. +358 40 827 1142
Asta Manninen, Director, City of Helsinki Urban Facts, tel. +358 50 559 6610
Tanja Lahti, Project Manager, City of Helsinki Urban Facts, tel. +358 40 553 2425
Peter L. Häggström, Head of Communications HiQ, tel. +46 704 200 103
HiQ simplifies and improves using hi-tech solutions within communications and software development. The company is a leader in these areas and has the Nordic region as its home market. HiQ employs more than 1,300 staff and has offices both in the Nordic countries and in Russia. HiQ is also listed on the NASDAQ OMX Stockholm Mid Cap List. For more information, please visit www.hiq.se.
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