Abstract: Nettimaunula project                  

Background:  Nettimaunula is a part of a great national (Finnish) information society project called OSKU (Learning Regions). OSKU has many challenging goals:

• To build up a citizen network in a certain area so that the people in that area will create the core of the local information society, i.e. the local virtual community, shaping it according to their own needs and desires. 
  
• To build up local IT skills by offering free IT-education especially for older people and those, who are in danger in getting segregated from the rapid technical development in our society. 
  
• To use local unemployed people as basic human resource in the project by educating them first and then employing them as technicians, educators and content creators in the project. 

The base of the project was laid on experiments in a citizen network running in several rural areas in eastern Finland. In OSKU there are eight different pilot areas in Finland, most of them rural. Those areas are: Northern Lappland, Kainuu (Northeast Finland) Pieksämäki region, Padasjoki region, Eastern Uusimaa, the Turunmaa archipelago and Suburbs in the eastern part of the City of Turku. 

Funding: Nettimaunula is mainly financed by the Finnish National Fund for Research and Development Sitra and the City of Helsinki. Also the Employment and Economic Development Centre of Uusimaa has contributed to the funding of the project by financing an 8-month-long education period for unemployed.

Coordination: Nettimaunula project is coordinated by The City Office of Helsinki. The steering committee of the project consists of representatives of the Helsinki City Municipality, the Helsinki University of Technology and The Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities (Kuntaliitto).

The members of the steering committee are: 

• Vesa Paavola, chairman of the steering committee, organization manager, City Office of Helsinki 
• Pekka Virkamäki, Division head, Administration, Public Works Office, City of Helsinki
• Markku Hietala, architect, City Planning Department of Helsinki 
• Pia Bäcklund, researcher, City of Helsinki Urban Facts 
• Raija Ollikainen, consultant for administrative research, City Office of Helsinki 
• Simo Tanner, Senior Advisor, Information Technology, The Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities 
• Aija Staffans, architect, Helsinki University of Technology 
• Hannu Kurki, areal coordinator, City Office of Helsinki 
• Heli Rantanen, project manager, Helsinki University of Technology

Budget: Ca. 416 000 € (including the funding of Sitra, City of Helsinki and the Employment and the Economic Development Centre of Uusimaa).

Duration of the project: Two years: June 20001-June 2003

Abstract

Maunula as a project area In summer 2001 Maunula, a Helsinki city quarter with 9000 inhabitants, was picked up among seven other regions as a pilot area in a information science project called Learning Regions (Oppivat Seutukunnat), OSKU, which is financed by the Finnish National Fund for Research and Development (Sitra). The project, Nettimaunula, is based on earlier experiences of local development projects in this city quarter with many problems like high employment, low income rate and aged population. 

The starting point for the project was challenging: low rate of internet connections, exceptional age structure (25 % of inhabitants are over 65 years old) and high unemployment. The questions were: What to do to make people´s living environment better? What are the most effective ways of interacting? How to improve the bad image of the area? How to affect city planning, how to communicate with the civil servants and officials and how to inform each other and build up local networks more efficiently? 

Nettimaunula differs from the other OSKU cases in many ways. It´s the most urban area compared to the others, which has to be taken account when testing the idea of "community spirit" and citizenship. Maunula also has a history of citizen activism and tested practices (Local Forum, Home Street project etc.). Due to the existing know-how, the idea of OSKU was carried out in an independent way, utilizing many kind of human resources and activist networks. 

The City of Helsinki as a coordinator of the project aims to find good practises in communication between the residents and the municipality. In Nettimaunula it hopes to find a model to apply in other city quarters. The City also hopes that the experiences and good examples of the project will be diffused in local governance as well. 

Citizen network in Maunula 

Nowadays the use of information and communication technologies is a natural part of local activity. For years a local web site - local data base - has played an important role in many development processes in the area. Now a new digital community tool has been launched and tested in practice. The actual citizen network software is being realized using a customized application, not a licenced FirstClass™ client like the other project regions in OSKU. This web compatible intranet software was designed exclusively for Nettimaunula. 

The citizen network - or community intranet - www.maunula.net was launched in 2.9.2002. All the inhabitants were invited to join the network by posting them usernames and passwords for registration. In this intranet everyone acts with his or hers own name. About 12 % of the inhabitants have registered into the system in five months. They have a free email address with a web based interface, an access to local news and discussions, and most of all: a tool for easily build up and maintain an intranet forum of their own within the local intranet. All kinds of associations, societies, companies, firms, clubs and groups of individuals have made use of this communication tool which is much more easier to construct and update than ordinary web pages. About 70 intranets have already been established. 

Access to internet? 

Project funding makes it possible to maintain a local Net Center Mediapaja, which was originally set up by the Residents Association of Maunula. Net Center Mediapaja is a physical base of the project. It serves as a free public net center with several computers and fast internet connections for those who don´t have internet connection at their homes (60 % of the households in Maunula). People can also make photocopies, use the telephone, fax machine and printers for a small fee. Many come and ask for help in their domestic ICT problems. Nowadays there are 700 - 900 visitors per month. The project employees also work there. 

Efforts have been also made to improve the ICT infrastructure of the area. In Finland, high price - set by the two biggest operators - and slow connection speed of a "normal" modem prevent people from utilizing the internet. The project has coordinated a "broad band project" in the area by bringing together operators, technical firms and housing companies. The whole "story" has been carefully documented in the net, so that the information is for everyone to see. The project has managed to find a way to offer a cheap and fast fixed price internet connection model for ordinary people. According to our experiences, the cheap price - form 7 to 14 euros per month - changes dramatically the way how the internet is utilized. Some questions have raised: if the municipality and government keep developing sophisticated web applications and transferring more and more services into the internet, are people equally capable of using them and taking advantage of these new services? In 10 months the project has succeeded in providing cheap broad band internet connections to the area and especially it has managed to spread the word and in that way challenge the big commercial operators into debate. So far this part of the project has raised the most amount of interest in a national scale. 

Education 

Many people are in need of "grass root" ICT-education and guidance in using computer in Maunula, where the population is quite aged and not so well-educated. The project has arranged free teach-ins in small groups (mainly two "pupils" at the time) for the elderly people who want to learn basic computer skills. Teaching takes place in Mediapaja, middle of Maunula.

An ICT course for unemployed of Maunula region was organized in cooperation with the Technical Vocational School of Helsinki and the Economic Development Center of Uusimaa. The students of this 8-month-long course had their practical training periods carried out in Nettimaunula. They worked as teachers, technicians, content creators and computer mechanics. One part of the project was to fix old, city abandoned computers for the residents of Maunula so that they can freely "practice" the use of computer and internet at their homes during the two-year-long project. At the moment about 50 computers are in use.

Communicative Planning

As a sub-project of Nettimaunula, a group of researchers has been planning, realizing and testing interactive ICT tools for city planning in cooperation with the City of Helsinki (Department of City Planning and Department of Public Works) and the Helsinki University of Technology, Department of Architecture. The web site of the planning case of Maunula Mall has published in spring 2002 and an interactive application for gathering local knowledge concerning the safety and habitability of the residents in Maunula will be published in the net during February 2003.

Key words: - Local communication structure - Intranet as a virtual community tool - Citizen network - Local data base - Cheap fixed price internet connections - ICT education for the elderly - Communicative planning

Links:

www.maunula.net Community portal (in Finnish)
www.kaupunginosat.net/kotikatu/frontpage.htm  (Home Street and Nettimaunula in English) www.kaupunginosat.net/maunula/nettimaunula_engl.htm Home Site of Maunula City Quarter
www.oskut.net   (Learning Regions/ Sitra; some material also in English) 
www.kaupunginosat.net/maunula/ostari  (The Case of Maunula Shopping Center)

29.1.2003 Heli Rantanen, project manager
 heli.rantanen@hut.fi