Helsinki wishes to be the most functional city in the world that makes the best use of digitalisation. The aim of the City of Helsinki is to make their services independent of time and place and, thus, facilitate the daily lives of the city’s residents. By utilizing the information gained, Helsinki will also create better services for its residents. At the same time, the aim of the City of Helsinki is also to diversify the rather masculine image of the information technology and software industry.
Adequate digital skills will come to be a prerequisite for employment in almost any field. That is why the City of Helsinki Employment Services will participate in the Mimmit koodaa hackathon in September 2021, for which the city will offer its own named participants for the challenge. In the challenge, the competition teams will get to design solutions to the very concrete problem of employment services, i.e. to measure, identify and develop the digital skills of jobseekers.
“By measuring the digital skills of jobseekers, jobseekers will be able to find the training that correspond to their skill levels better than before and the city will be able to respond to know-how development by creating new training paths”, says project coordinator of the Employment Services’ Digirasti project Johanna
Hollström.
The aim of the City of Helsinki’s challenge is to improve the digital skills of jobseekers in a more targeted way
The employment of residents is important to the City of Helsinki. However, employment opportunities are changing along with digitalisation: for some, jobseekers lack the digital skills needed to both apply for jobs and to perform them. Helsinki, therefore, wishes to improve the digital skills of jobseekers, and a step towards this is to identify the individual applicant’s abilities and then provide suitable training.
Among jobseekers, there are people who have not required digital skills in their previous jobs. Traditionally, digital skills have been tested by arranging computer lessons in a classroom and asking about an individual’s skills. Instead, Helsinki is now seeking a scalable and easy-to-use way to assess applicants’ digital skills, for example, with the help of a mobile application or game. The solution should be able to describe the applicant’s skill level, so that Helsinki can provide targeted training to improve their skills.
Another of the challenges of the hackathon is related to sustainable development. Its task is to design solutions for a sustainable good life. Topics may include how to make sustainable and more environmentally friendly travel and transportation choices, or how to measure one’s own CO2 emissions.
The city’s challenge will be presented by Deputy Mayor Nasima Razmyar at the Mimmit koodaa webinar on Tuesday, 17 August at 16:00. You can follow the webinar via this link. The City of Helsinki also offers mentors to support the competitors throughout the hackathon.
The Mimmit koodaa program supports women interested in the software field
The core of the Mimmit Encode program is to provide readily available free coding workshops for women who are interested in coding but have no previous experience with it. The aim is to increase equality in the information technology field in Finland and break gender stereotypes. The program is led by the Suomen ohjelmisto- ja sähköisen liiketoiminnan liitto (Finnish Software and E-Business Association) and its member companies. The long-term aim is to give future generations equal opportunities to study and succeed in the IT field. In the future, almost every company will be a software company in some way, and the use, customization, purchase and development of software will increase. It is important that coding at program events can be practiced even without previous experience. The Mimmit koodaa community already has over 6,000 women and there is room for more!
You have until September 8 to apply to participate in the hackathon
The Mimmit koodaa hackathon will be held online from 17-19 September 2021 and the application period for the event is until 8 September 2021. Teams of 2-5 people will participate in the hackathon, but you can also register for the network alone, as those who register for the event will have their own teams created. The winning team will be awarded a prize of 5,000 euros. The Hackathon is organized in extensive collaboration between cities and businesses. In addition to the City of Helsinki, the main organizers of the event are Accenture, Reaktor, eCraft, Nordea and Microsoft. The City of Espoo, Stora Enso, Supercell, Oracle, ABB, CGI, Solita, EY, Futurice and Wärtsilä are also involved.
For more information, read more about the hackathon and check out a more detailed challenge description at: https://ultrahack.org/mimmit-koodaa-hackathon.