Siirtosoitto results and ending
As the pilot is coming to an end, is time to for a review and some acknowledgements.
First of all thanks to the City of Helsinki/Kymp for giving us the possibility of testing out our idea in this pilot. Special thanks to Stara and in particular to Toni Rantanen, who made possible the testing on the field in the H-area.
The pilot has been a success both technically and in terms of results: almost 200 saved tows in H-area alone and a noticeable reduction of cars in the streets before the cleaning, proving that our solution could bring savings to the City and its subcontractors.
Even Helsingin Sanomat editorial took notice of the pilot on April 29th, saying that “Limitations and sanctions have been changed into helping and cooperation”. This was the core of our original idea, and got us a lot of positive feedback.
Despite the good results and feedback, the City of Helsinki has informed us that:
“the City sees its role as a provider of up-to-date information via an open, good-quality interface and will not directly develop a consumer app, but leaves that to the open market. This gives everybody the opportunity to develop their own business model to offer services to the citizen using the City’s open data”.
And therefore we will stop Siirtosoitto service on May 25th and all user-related data will be destroyed.
While we believe in open interfaces, we are also convinced that it is the City’s duty to inform the citizens in the most effective way. So, while we would have been perfectly happy with a public tender to offer a service *like* Siirtosoitto (not necessarily *our* service) to the citizens, we are extremely disappointed at this decision, both as developers and as Helsinki residents.
Nevertheless we are trying to find partners and other ways to still offer for free to the citizens of Helsinki (at least a limited version of) our service for next year. Please subscribe to our new mailing list if you would like to receive information about Siirtosoitto in the future.
If you have any question, contact us info@twentyhexagons.com
Twenty Hexagons