Platta brings Helsinki's digital services onto a common platform

Platta brings Helsinki’s digital services onto a common platform

Platta is the City of Helsinki’s open platform for developing, testing, and running digital services – bringing everything together in one place. It’s a fully open-source environment that supports the entire lifecycle of digital services. At the moment, around 80 applications are running on Platta – and the number keeps growing. In early 2024, HiQ took over the responsibility for maintaining and developing Platta as the city’s service management and development partner.

The Goal: One Shared Platform for all Digital Services

The City of Helsinki is Finland’s largest employer, with around 40,000 employees, four major departments, and a central administration.

“Before Platta, each department ran their own digital projects. It became messy, time-consuming, and led to overlapping work and inconsistent services,” says Jari Eriksson, Service manager at the City of Helsinki.

The city decided to bring everything under one roof – platforms, tools, and service providers. The result was a shared publishing platform where all new digital services could be built together.

“The outcome is exactly what we hoped for. Now we can develop new services in a consistent environment, and Platta supports the entire journey – from development to production.”

Ensuring uninterrupted service – even during provider changes – is a top priority for the city.

“Platta has strong incident and problem management tools, so we can act fast before issues escalate,” says Eriksson.

Platta is a solid, centralized solution that benefits the entire city. Many departments rely on it. Our goal is to simplify work and create unified digital services

Jari Eriksson, Service Manager, the City of Helsinki

The Solution: Open Source, Containers, and Cloud Services

Transparency and openness are core values for the City of Helsinki. That’s why all applications on Platta are open source – allowing both public and private actors to benefit. The city has been working with open source for over a decade.

Platta is built using modern technologies like containers, cloud services, and Red Hat OpenShift – instead of traditional data centers.

Because of the complexity and technical demands, a skilled partner was essential.

“HiQ understands the nuances of the technologies we use. Their experience with OpenShift helped us define working methods that fit our needs. The collaboration has been excellent,” Eriksson adds.

A Unified Platform means Better Quality and Stronger Security

For citizens, Platta translates into high-quality and always-available services. The shared platform and standardized practices let developers focus on building and supporting services.

“Everyone on Platta benefits from shared databases, monitoring tools, and DevOps pipelines. This ensures a consistent level of quality – regardless of the vendor behind the service,” Eriksson says.

It also boosts security. Without a shared approach, each provider might implement security differently.

“With Platta, we know exactly how security is handled. There’s no guesswork – everything is consistent and transparent.”

The Results: Big Savings for the City and it’s Users

Platta has led to major cost savings for the City of Helsinki. Without a centralized platform, the city would have to manage dozens of separate contracts and services – now there’s just one.

“Previously, each department was in charge of its own infrastructure and incident management,” says Eriksson.

“Platta is a turnkey solution. Departments don’t need to go through procurement or build their own systems. Everything is included – publishing automation, support ticket handling, integrated documentation with Jira and Confluence, and key security tools.”

Looking ahead, the city wants to further improve security, ensure service continuity, and continue evolving Platta to support modern development.

“Updating security isn’t enough – the platform has to keep developing. We’ve had deep conversations with our partners about the future, and everyone is committed to moving forward together.”