City of Helsinki Platta brings the City of Helsinki’s digital services onto one platform
Platta is the City of Helsinki’s open-source application development, testing, and production environment that gathers all the city’s digital services on a single platform.
Platta is the City of Helsinki’s open-source application development, testing, and production environment. Currently, approximately 80 applications are in development and production on Platta, and the number is steadily growing.
“Platta is an exemplary centralized solution that serves the entire city and is genuinely needed and wanted by its various departments. Our goal is to streamline operations and create unified services,” says Jari Eriksson, Service Manager for the City of Helsinki.
At the beginning of 2024, HiQ took responsibility for maintaining and developing Platta as the City of Helsinki’s service management and development partner.
“We want to be a trailblazer working for the common good with modern technologies. With HiQ, we have found not just a faceless supplier but a partner to develop solutions together with.”
Objective: One common publishing platform for the city’s digital services
The City of Helsinki is Finland’s largest employer, with approximately 40,000 employees, four departments, and central administration.
“Before Platta, various departments within the city had multiple separate digital service projects, which made management complicated and often led to overlapping work and fragmented services,” Eriksson says.
The City of Helsinki wanted to centralize application platforms and the related processes and tools. At the same time, it aimed to reduce the number of partners providing services. Therefore, it was decided to create a single joint publishing platform where all services built with selected technologies could be centralized.
“The result fully meets our goals. New digital services can now be built on the same environment, and Platta guarantees support throughout the entire lifecycle of services.”
One of the City of Helsinki’s main goals is to ensure service continuity. Services must always be available without production interruptions, even during provider transitions.
“Platta’s service management solutions secure continuity. With its incident and problem management tools and processes, any issues can be addressed immediately before they escalate,” adds Eriksson.
Solution: At the forefront of open-source and container technology
Openness and transparency are essential principles for the City of Helsinki. The applications on Platta are implemented as open source, allowing both public and private actors to benefit from the work done. The City of Helsinki has been engaged in open-source development for over a decade.
The goal was to implement Platta using advanced technologies, so instead of traditional data centers, the solution utilizes cloud services, container technologies, and the Red Hat OpenShift platform.
The city’s demanding operating environment and the specialized expertise required by modern technologies also necessitated a strong partner.
“HiQ is a partner who understands the characteristics and nuances of the technologies we use. Their previous experience with OpenShift has helped us see which operating models are best suited to our needs. I am very satisfied with the collaboration,” says Eriksson.
Solution: A common platform ensures high service quality and security
For residents, Platta is reflected in the quality and continuous availability of services. The unified architecture and standardized practices allow different departments to focus on application development and user support in peace.
“All Platta users benefit from the same databases, logging and monitoring services, and DevOps pipelines. The unified overall architecture ensures a consistent level of service quality because quality does not depend on individual vendors’ own implementation methods and choices,” Eriksson explains.
The common solution also improves security. Without Platta, its numerous different actors would implement security in their own ways, leading to inconsistent practices.
“With a shared platform, we know exactly what and how protection is implemented. We don’t have to settle for assumptions; instead, we can rely on consistent, transparent security measures.”
The city’s demanding operating environment and the specialized expertise required by modern technologies also necessitated a strong partner.
Result: Significant savings for both the city and customers
Platta has brought significant cost savings to the City of Helsinki. Without a centralized platform, the city would at worst have to manage dozens of separate infrastructure and service management agreements instead of the current single one.
“Previously, each department was responsible for its own infrastructure, as well as service and incident management,” Eriksson notes.
“Savings are generated within the city because Platta operates on a turn-key basis. Customers do not need to tender service providers or build their own processes—Platta covers everything needed, including publishing automation, support ticket management, and centralized documentation through integrated Atlassian Jira and Confluence tools, as well as essential security services.”
In the future, the City of Helsinki plans to focus specifically on improving security, ensuring service continuity, and developing Platta to better support modern software development.
“Simply performing necessary security updates is not enough; Platta must remain up-to-date and continue to evolve. We have had in-depth discussions about the project’s future with our partners. It is clear that all parties are committed to succeeding together.”
The collaboration in a nutshell:
- Development and maintenance of an open-source solution
- Utilization of container technology, cloud services, and Red Hat OpenShift platform
- Centralization of infrastructure and service management onto a shared platform
- Security management and standardization
- Long-term partnership and ensuring continuity
Header image by Julia Kivelä