The HRI service organised an event on the importance of open data in data journalism for international journalists on 2nd May 2016 at Library10 in Helsinki. The event was organised as an official pre event of the UNESCO World Press Freedom Day 2016 which also took place in Helsinki. The open data and data journalism event was however open to everyone.

The event was hosted by Mr Timo Cantell, Director of City of Helsinki Urban Facts. The event started with presentations by Ms Tuula Haavisto, Library Director at Helsinki City Library and Mr Kari Lämsä, Director of Library10. They spoke about current library topics. A new central library is being built in Helsinki and will be completed in 2018. Libraries are open and public spaces available for everyone. Even if you still can read and borrow books at the libraries these are far from the only services on offer today. Libraries expand into new services and are increasingly places where people can find help when searching reliable and useful information, need to borrow tools or need a workspace or equipment to create media content.

Ms Tanja Lahti, the Project Manager of HRI service gave a presentation on the open data initiatives, the HRI service and open data use cases in the Helsinki region. Ms Katja Räisänen and Mr Juha Yrjölä gave an introduction to the electronic Ahjo case management system. All the decisions made by the administration and the decision making bodies of the City of Helsinki are processed through the system. The resulting data is made available through the Open Ahjo application programming interface as open data. On a global scale this is a very unique open data resource which offers great opportunities for data journalists to follow the decision-making process in Helsinki.

Mr Tuomas Peltomäki, a journalist working for Helsingin Sanomat newspaper, gave an interesting insight into the work and challenges of data journalists. Peltomäki often combines data analysis with visualization. An interesting example of this approach is a visualization based on data obtained from the Parliament of Finland that shows which interest groups and lobbies the Parliament is listening to. Peltomäki said it is rather easy to do data journalism in Finland since public authorities are usually cooperative and willing to release public data that data journalists can use and analyse.

Mr Teemu Ropponen and Mr Jaakko Korhonen from Open Knowledge Finland presented several interesting cases on how the community has increased openness and the use of open data. Open Knowledge Finland is a registered not-for-profit association promoting openness, the use of open knowledge and advancing the development of an open society in Finland. It is also part of the wider international Open Knowledge network.

The audience was very active and participated eagerly in the discussion about open data and openness in general.

All the presentations can be viewed on the www.Helsinkikanava.fi channel.