HRI service operates in four areas: generating, opening up, sharing and using data. The main role of HRI is to support city employees in opening up data and to promote the use of the opened data.

Producing data

HRI aims to promote the opening up of existing data from municipalities in the Helsinki metropolitan area for wider use. The comparability, discoverability and usability of data require cooperation between municipalities, i.e. data producers. This cooperation includes harmonisation and further development of data. In the future, it is hoped that data production will better support the distribution of open data and also take account of data users.

Opening data

HRI service includes a clearing house function to assist and coordinate the opening of data. The clearing house is based at the City of Helsinki Executive Office, but serves data producers and users regionally. Its tasks include assisting data producers with data opening, quality assurance and collecting and providing user feedback to data producers. The clearing house also maintains the HRI website and manages HRI communications.

Sharing data

The most visible part of HRI service is the hri.fi web service, where open data from the capital region’s cities can be easily found. The online service can be thought of as a kind of search engine for open data, directing the data-hungry to the right data. The service also collects direct feedback from users on the data and its usability. There are hundreds of similar online services around the world.

Utilising data

Open data is for everyone interested: local governments, businesses, universities, higher education institutions, research institutes and citizens. It can be applied in many ways. It can be used as such to support decision-making, planning or research. It can be incorporated into an existing or new application. Or it can be combined and presented in a completely new way.

But there is no intention to limit the uses of data in advance – ultimately, the only limit to the use of open data is the imagination. The important thing is that a wider range of users can use open data in the way they want, as easily as possible.

HRI service supports data users, for example by organising events, answering data requests and other questions from users, and participating in events and hackathons.