City of Espoo, Finland

Bringing time and cost savings and greater operational effectiveness to a busy urban workforce

The challenge

Espoo is a vibrant, thoroughly modern Finnish city intent on using information technology to deliver equally advanced public services to its citizens. With a population that grew tenfold between 1950 and 2000 and continues to grow at a steady pace, the job of providing seamless, resident-friendly IT services has not been easy. 

Espoo government, employing a workforce of 15,000, operates an extensive IT infrastructure, consisting of:

  • Thousands of workstations, laptops, printers, tablets, smartphones and associated software applications
  • IT equipment from hundreds of manufacturers
  • Devices installed at 550 city government locations and public schools. 

As Espoo found itself in recent years becoming ever more reliant on IT, problems managing these resources began to mount.

Espoo needed a fast, effective approach to supporting its diverse IT user community with high-caliber services that would yield substantially higher levels of end user satisfaction.

The solution

In 2013, Espoo selected CGI to transform the City’s IT support service capabilities. CGI quickly made a demonstrable difference, using processes and methods proven from delivering numerous engagements with other government clients.   

The CGI approach prioritized requirements, categorized support functions and rationalized available resources. To meet the City’s needs, CGI built a program consisting of 18 help desk personnel and 20 IT specialists at customer premises sites. In addition, CGI created a centrally located “service point” desk for in-person tech support. 

Once deployed, the CGI team began handling up to 7,000 service requests per month on average, cutting service time and improving quality. Devices are now kept up-to-date with recent software releases to ensure they are running smoothly. 

Support services provided by CGI include:

  • Windows upgrades
  • Application software patch installations
  • Virus control software installations
  • Device and network problem resolutions
  • “Cradle to grave” equipment tracking and support 

Results to date

Espoo has entered a new era of end-user IT services. Problems are now resolved quickly and efficiently, with seamless services running from help desk assistance to onsite support. Espoo technical staff monitors service delivery with user feedback surveys, and the results to date have been extremely positive. 

With faster, more effective end user-support and program management overall, CGI is helping the City cut the costs of IT utilization, get more value from its sizeable IT infrastructure investment, and improve the performance of its heavily IT reliant city workforce.

Contact us for more information