Helsinki seriously aims to be the best functioning city in the world, with the best possible conditions for working and living. One essential step towards the goal is to help those whose employment is hampered by deficient digital skills. Adequate digital skills will come to be a prerequisite for employment in almost every field. At the same time, it is the aim of the City of Helsinki to also diversify the rather masculine image of the information technology and software industry.
With these goals in mind, Helsinki’s Employment Services participated in the Mimmit koodaa hackathon on 17-19 September 2021. For those who participated, the city also offered its own city-tailored challenge. It allowed competition teams to design solutions for measuring, identifying and developing the digital skills of job seekers.
The employment of its residents is important to Helsinki. One step to improve the digital skills of jobseekers is to identify the capabilities of each individual applicant. The aim is that by measuring the digital skills of jobseekers, jobseekers will find training that matches their skill level better than before, and the city can also meet the needs for know-how development by providing appropriate training.
The standard of the hackathon was high - the winning team skilfully combined many needs into one solution
Helsinki is now seeking a scalable and easy-to-use way to assess applicants' digital skills. This could be done, for example, through a mobile app or game. During the weekend, six competition teams participated in the Helsinki challenge, mentored by a number of employees of Helsinki's Employment Services.
“We managed to reach a very diverse and motivated group of women for this hackathon and for creating solutions to the problem. It tells of the great untapped and unused potential of women, which was now fortunately exploited. The participants thought the event was successful and inspiring and gave birth to many follow-up ideas,” says the leader of the Mimmit koodaa program Milja Köpsi.
The solutions of the teams that participated in the hackathon reflected well the participants' different skills in background data analytics, user interface design and front/backend coding. At the same time, the solutions presented by the teams were inventive and also recognized the needs of the city well. The application for Helsinki must utilize the city's brand guidelines, the Helsinki Design System used in Helsinki's website design and, in particular, the requirements of the EU's general data protection regulation, the GDPR.
The competition was eventually won by a proposal called Digital Competence Challenge. The team that designed it included Arjeta Peshtani, Yen Nguyen, Laura Hannula and Marina Massoud. The solution was an application that, when logged in, allows the user to both test and learn the digital skills needed for job searches at different levels. The idea also included a bot-based assistant to help and motivate the use of the app. The application's user interface is easy to use and takes into account users with different accessibility and visuals. The winning team’s solution also makes good use of the opportunities for assessing, guiding and collecting individual skills, as well as the digital skills framework created by the European Commission. The winning team will be awarded a prize of EUR 1,500.
There were also fresh approaches in the solutions of the other teams, and the solution to be used in the most optimal way could be a combination of the ideas of all the teams.
"It was great to see how all the teams managed to produce relevant and practical solutions that the city can use to combat digital exclusion from working life," says Johannes Hirvelä, Development Manager at the City of Helsinki's Economic Development Division.
The Mimmit koodaa program supports women interested in the software field
The activities and events of the Mimmit koodaa program actively break the myth that coding is only for men and the mathematically gifted. The long-term goal of the program is to give future generations an equal opportunity to study and succeed in the IT industry, regardless of gender. The program offers free low-threshold operations for women with no previous experience in software development. It is led by the Finnish Software and E-business Association and its member companies. The community already has over 6,000 women.
The Mimmit koodaa hackathon was implemented by Ultrahack, which organizes dozens of hackathons internationally every year. In addition, there was extensive collaboration between cities and businesses in organizing the Hackathon. In addition to the City of Helsinki, the main organizers of the event were Accenture, Reaktor, eCraft, Nordea and Microsoft. The City of Espoo, Stora Enso, Supercell, Oracle, ABB, CGI, Solita, EY, Futurice and Wärtsilä were also involved.
Links for further information:
More information about the Mimmit code program(Link leads to external service)
Learn more about Hackathon and Ultrahack(Link leads to external service)
Hackathon winners and other awards(Link leads to external service)
European Commission Digital Skills Framework(Link leads to external service)
Caption of the image: The goal of the Mimmit koodaa -program (women code -program) is to give everyone an equal opportunity to study and succeed in the IT industry, regardless of gender. Image from the Mimmit koodaa workshop from 2019. (Mikke Pöyhönen)