The city of Helsinki has selected Nitor as its frame agreement contractor for agile open source software development services, especially in user interface development. The agreement also includes expert services for planning new digital services.
Helsinki utilizes open source in developing digital services for the citizens. Frame agreement contractors are used in several different development projects of digital services.
Helsinki has taken a pioneering role in open source projects. The value of open source comes from its scalability: once something is done well in one city, it may easily be replicated in other cities as well. It also allows citizens to participate in services development.
Nitor has executed several open source projects already. Examples of these are a park & ride data system for the Helsinki Region Traffic authority (HSL) and a public transport journey planner.
Projects based on open source also help customers to avoid the risk of vendor lock-ins.
“For us, it is self-evident that the rights of the services we’ve developed always belong to the customer. Naturally, we publish all our own applications and tools as open source. We have common practices to ensure that input by different vendors and the city of Helsinki are aligned,” Nitor’s digital engineer Markku Rontu tells.
Developing digital services for the citizens plays an important role for the city of Helsinki. The new Digital Helsinki program roots for courage and experimentation. The frame agreement on agile software development services is for three years, and its estimated value is about 5 million euros. The agreement includes a one-year optional year.
“A customer satisfaction survey was carried out for customers of each participant in the competitive tendering by the city of Helsinki. Clearly, our customers are pleased with our services, because this area was considered the best in the tendering,” says COO Olli Auvinen, one of Nitor’s founders.