Change in operations | Ecosystem | Services
About DigiOne
Our goal is to improve learning and well-being by creating a groundbreaking change in a way the educational services are produced in Finland. This is achieved by building an open ecosystem where all actors working in the fied of education can join together to build a national service platform for education.
The project began in 2019 and will run until 2025. During this time, services will be provided for basic education and general upper secondary education. However, the design of the service platform also takes into account early childhood education and vocational training so that the services related to them can be integrated into the platform at a later stage. The total budget of the project is approximately 11 million euros, of which Business Finland will finance 5.4 million euros. The aim is for service providers and other actors in the sector to participate in the construction of the service platform and services with their own investments.
The cities of Jyväskylä, Lahti, Oulu, Turku and Vantaa as well as Tiera have signed a cooperation agreement for the long-term development of the DigiOne service platform and ecosystem. The goal is that in 2028 there will be about 70 municipalities using the service. The city of Vantaa will act as its responsible host during the project. After the project, the responsibility for ecosystem coordination and the ownership of the DigiOne platform will be transferred to Tiera.
Project management
Ilkka Kalo
Program Owner and Responsible Director
ilkka.kalo@vantaa.fi
Kirsi Lehto
Program Director
kirsi.lehto@vantaa.fi
Topical
The best companies in the field to provide DigiOne services
17.2.2022
The objectives of the DigiOne-organization are
- to create a national digital service platform and education ecosystem that can involve interested education providers and service providers, and other actors in the field
- to contribute to the change of the pedagogical operating culture and management in accordance with the curricula, e.g. creating a functional whole of digital education services and improving knowledge management opportunities
- to create better conditions at the national level for the learning and well-being of children and young people and to reduce inequalities
- to create easy-to-use and easy-to-deploy services itself and with market players, extending their use to the whole country
- to create synergy benefits for its owners by reducing duplication of work and cooperatingin relation to, for example. procurement, integrations, and data security and protection
- to ensure non-commercial ownership of the service platform and the ecosystem
Operational objectives
- Supporting curriculum teaching and harmonizing assessment
- More equal opportunities for learning and well-being
- More individual learning paths and better learning outcomes
- More use of knowledge management
The ecosystem’s objectives
- To involve all willing municipalities and service providers
- To create a management system for the ecosystem to ensure the long-term development of the platform and the ecosystem
- To develop rules of the game for ecosystem actors
- State support from the point of view of social impact
- To create a healthy market balance
Technological objectives
- A multi-tenant learning information system for education providers and educational institutions
- A unique, smooth user experience that brings together different services
- Exploiting the potential of digitalization
- Common national rules for the education providers and the education technology field
Change in operations
The starting point is better learning and learner well-being
The starting point for change is better learning and learner well-being. The new digital service platform makes it possible to support the overall well-being of the learner by compiling the information related to the learner into a whole that is available to the actors who need it in real time. Better personal support for learners will ensure more equal opportunities for learning. The service platform also makes it possible for the learner to develop his or her own capacity, as its functionalities make it easier for the learner to set their own personal goals for learning and plan their own lives.
Responding to the needs of a changing society and working life
A changing society and working life require a change in the pedagogical operating culture. The learner is required to be more self-directed and responsible than before, and on the other hand, interaction and cooperation skills are also emphasized. DigiOne supports this change, as the learner has all the information from the education (such as objectives, learning materials, and assessment) gathered in the system. In addition, the use of modern digital tools frees up teachers’ time to meet the learner and provide individual support. The intention is that with DigiOne’s services, the planning of teaching according to the curriculum will be easier and developed, both from a content and interactive point of view. The new service platform will also make it easier to deploy services already on the market. In order to better exploit the benefits of these digital tools and services in educational institutions, teachers’ information and communication technology skills need to be supported.
A tool to support knowledge management
DigiOne provides information on learning and schooling at both the individual and group levels, and the information is available to those who need it in an aggregated and easily analyzable form. With this, the goal is to support the shift in leadership toward knowledge management. In this context, knowledge management means making observations and conclusions based on data, as well as evaluating and operating one’s own work based on conclusions. It is possible to utilize the information at the level of the educational institution (teachers, principals), at the level of the organizer of education (education leadership) and at the national level (for example, research cooperation). The aim is also to produce information for the learner’s own work planning and self-assessment.
Change in operations
Jukka Manninen
Coordination of Change in Operations
jukka.manninen@lahti.fi
Jarkko Lampinen
City of Jyväskylä
Program Manager
jarkko.lampinen@jyvaskyla.fi
Jukka Manninen
City of Lahti
Program Manager
jukka.manninen@lahti.fi
Jukka Miettunen
City of Oulu
Program Manager
jukka.miettunen@ouka.fi
Seppo Pukonen
City of Turku
Program Manager
seppo.pukonen@turku.fi
Tuija Lindström
City of Vantaa
Project Manager
tuija.lindstrom@vantaa.fi
Ecosystem
DigiOne’s ecosystem refers to the network of actors created around the service platform, where the data, services, and know-how they produce are combined into a whole.
The following parties have been identified as parties to the DigiOne ecosystem: service users, education providers, research and assessment organizations, platform owners, service providers, and content producers. In addition, the ecosystem also includes a variety of background actors that do not actually use or produce the services of the platform. Such are, for example, actors at national level who influence the service platform, for example through legislation.
The aim of the project is to create an ecosystem that benefits all the actors involved. In a functioning ecosystem, each party to the ecosystem feels that it receives more benefits from the ecosystem than it contributes to it. The benefits and contributions of the project have been examined from the perspective of different actors in the ecosystem. It is hoped that education providers, service providers and other actors in the field will be involved in the ecosystem in stages, as the service platform is completed.
Ecosystem
Kirsi Lehto
Ecosystem Collaboration Coordination & Owner Cooperation
kirsi.lehto@vantaa.fi
Anna Österman
User Cooperation & Research Entity Cooperation
anna.osterman@vantaa.fi
Maria Nevala
Cooperation Between Content & Service Producers
maria.nevala@vantaa.fi
Mika Virtanen
Cooperation with Education Organizers (Tiera Sales)
mika.virtanen@tiera.fi
Services
DigiOne’s service concept includes the service platform and the services built around it. The most critical services will be produced by ourselves or by strategic partners. However, there is significant room for commercial market players. The goal is for DigiOne’s openly documented interfaces to encourage the creation of new innovative services.
Services built around the service platform can be divided into three different categories:
- DigiOne own services
- Common services
- Commercial services.
DigiOne own services
DigiOne own services are built or tendered by DigiOne. DigiOne is responsible for the development of these services and owns their intellectual property rights. The services will be the same for all education providers. DigiOne’s services include the following: the Education and school management, the Annual planning for education and The Education design service. DigiOne’s own services are mainly developed with open source and the outputs will be published during the project.
Common services
Jointly developed services will be produced in cooperation with innovative commercial operators and, in principle, the service provider owns their intellectual property rights. DigiOne seeks to make a significant impact on these services through procurement and collaboration. DigiOne will call for tenders for services in this group with one operator for each service entity. The aim is that later, when new services emerge, there could be a number of alternative services on the market from which education, training and education providers can bid for the service that best suits them.
DigiOne-influenced commercial services include the following services: Application and decision-making service, Timetable planning service, Home-school collaboration service and a marketplace for commercial services. The marketplace is not one of the services provided during the project.
Commercial services
Commercial services are developed and owned entirely by commercial operators. DigiOne supports the education provider in the procurement process through the preparation process (including ensuring technical compatibility as well as data security and data protection issues) as well as by producing model documents for the mini-tendering. The organizer of the teaching can then either mini-tender the service himself or buy the mini-tender from Tiera as a service. We will expect DigiOne compatibility from commercial service providers, e.g. through API interfaces, compliance with the rules of the game of the common ecosystems e.g. information security and protection, technical and ethical aspects, and willingness to cooperate with other ecosystem actors.
Commercial services include: learner services, learning materials and content production, pedagogical services for supporting education, learning environments, learner well-being services, pedagogical services for learning and assessment, and knowledge management services.
Service platform and interfaces
DigiOne’s service platform includes an integration platform, a data platform, and a test and development environment (the so-called “sandbox”) for service providers. From a technical point of view, the integration platform enables DigiOne to manage the ecosystem, that is, to set technical ”rules of the game” and to share best practices between the various actors in the ecosystem. The data platform, in turn, ensures the availability and sharing of data between different actors in the ecosystem.
Integration platform
At the heart of the integration platform will be API interfaces and their management. Providing and leveraging API interfaces between systems / services from different service providers will be the primary way to operate in the DigiOne ecosystem. In addition, the integration platform is intended to be able to produce more traditional integration models, such as message interfaces and file transfers.
The most important services of the integration platform are:
- Integrations with national systems and services
- Interfaces for municipal systems and services
- Interfaces for products / services of service providers belonging to the DigiOne ecosystem
Data platform
DigiOne’s core data and data warehouses will be compiled on the data platform so that this data can be utilized by the various parties in the ecosystem. Responsibility for managing core data (adding, updating, deleting) is decentralized so that each module / service is responsible for core data in its own area of responsibility. DigiOne’s core data is defined with an open data model and openly documented interfaces for core data management.
With regard to identity and access management, the guideline is that access control for learners, teachers, principals, and other school staff is based on the MPASSid identification solution. In the case of guardians, identification is mainly done by electronic identification with the help of the national suomi.fi identification service.
Sandbox
A so-called sandbox environment will be built on the DigiOne platform that serves as a development and test environment for operators. DigiOne test material (core data) and at the same time, that all services are compatible (both technically and process-wise) with DigiOne
Development model
The project applies a participatory development model that is holistic. The main stages of the development model are demand, development, and service production. The first stage of the development model (demand) deals with development ideas starting from customer needs and strategies. Clients are involved in brainstorming and clarifying the need in a so-called idea dialogue, the ideas are prioritized and taken forward to conceptualization, where preliminary architectural descriptions are made, enabling technologies are identified, cost-benefit analyzes are prepared, and, if necessary, Service Blueprint descriptions and user interface prototypes are also produced
Service platform construction
Jouni Kilpi
Project Manager Responsible for Service Platform Development
jouni.kilpi@vantaa.fi
Tatu Ulvila
Overall Architect of The Project
tatu.ulvila@vantaa.fi