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Public sector Integrations and API

Kuuntele case


Case story

City of Espoo


City of Espoo develops automation with Digia's integration services

Finland's second-largest city, Espoo, streamlines and automates work with Digia's integration services. Digia implemented a modern, secure integration platform for Espoo to reduce manual work. Digia produces these services with a lifecycle model that has served the city's development needs well.

 

Espoo is not only Finland's second-largest city, but also one of the largest employers in Finland. The city provides services to approximately 300,000 residents and 15,000 city employees. It's therefore not surprising that improving service efficiency through digitalization and modern information systems is very important to Espoo.

“We aim to reduce manual work and increase the degree of automation as much as possible,” says IT Manager Saku Jokinen. The aim is to provide services with the highest possible quality while increasing efficiency.

According to Jokinen, system integrations play a major role in this, as they can be used to build long automated process chains. “Typically, the need for integration stems from the fact that there is too much manual work somewhere. Of course, there are also other tools for automation, but integrations are among the most important ones,” he says. However, it became evident a few years ago that better tools were needed for integrations.

The new system has provided us with all the benefits we sought, and we have excellent cooperation. 

Saku Jokinen, IT Manager, City of Espoo

Key benefits

  • Implementing and further developing integrations is now easier, faster, and more cost-efficient.
  • Data is better available to the city's organization.
  • With automatic monitoring, problems are discovered immediately.
  • Maintaining integrations is more efficient, due to e.g. centralized version updates.
  • Information security has been strengthened.
Services provided
Technologies used

The challenge: how to automate more efficiently

Previously, the City of Espoo had no centralized integration platform, but it used, for example, direct integrations between systems. According to Jokinen, this led to many challenges. One was the lack of visibility. If integration faults occurred, they were not necessarily noticed immediately, which weakened the reliability of the systems.

It was also difficult to create new integrations, and the same applied to maintaining existing ones. “For example, implementing corrections was slow and difficult because we didn't have visibility into the entire integration chain,” Jokinen says. All these increased costs and slowed down the automation work.

Espoo sought to increase efficiency in two ways. First, a decision was made to acquire a modern centralized integration platform to enable easier and more efficient implementation of integrations. In addition, the city wanted a dedicated team of experts to implement integrations and develop automation comprehensively as a service.

In 2021, after a public tendering process, Espoo selected Digia to implement these reforms. The city had cooperated with Digia in the area of integrations since 2018, and the new agreement further intensified the cooperation.

Integration development and maintenance have become more efficient

Digia implemented a modern cloud-based integration platform based on Apache Camel software. Jokinen says that the City of Espoo has already benefited from the new platform in many ways.

First of all, implementing integrations is easier and faster than before, and data from information systems is more readily available to the city’s organization. In addition, the reliability of IT services has improved. With automatic monitoring, problems with integrations are discovered immediately and can be fixed quickly in the centralized system.

Furthermore, maintaining integrations is now more efficient. “For example, centralized version updates and lifecycle management of integrations are now possible,” Jokinen says.

One of the goals of this purchase was to strengthen information security, and this goal has been fulfilled as well. “The new architecture has considerably improved the level of information security,” Jokinen says. The cloud-based system also provides flexibility and continuity in terms of the integration platform’s technical maintenance.

"We have a good team spirit"

Digia delivers integrations as a service. This means that Digia's experts are responsible for the planning, implementation, and maintenance of integrations. Priorities are defined in close collaboration with Espoo's IT department. Digia is also responsible for the management and governance of integration services, which include, for example, service and governance models for integrations.

Digia uses AI in service delivery in various ways, within frames approved by the customer.

According to Jokinen, the collaboration model has worked well. “We both listen to each other and try to achieve the best possible outcome. We have a good team spirit,” he says. Development work is being carried out both to meet the specific needs of Espoo's different sectors and as part of IT-led large-scale development projects.

The City of Espoo is satisfied with both the new integration platform and the long-standing partnership with Digia. "The new system has provided us with all the benefits we sought, and we have excellent cooperation," Jokinen says.

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