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projectNew information technology tool called Itla View was developed to facilitate practices for the internal renewal of public service organizations aimed at children, young people, and families, including non-profit organizations (NGOs).
This information was sourced from "Itla View – Crowdsourcing and AI-based digital tool for knowledge management and systems change in public sector" by Observatory of Public Sector Innovation (OECD), https://oecd-opsi.org/innovations/itla-view-crowdsourcing-and-ai-based-digital-tool-for-knowledge-management-and-systems-change-in-public-sector/. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 IGO (CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO).
Public service organizations—including educational, social and healthcare service organizations—aimed at children, young people, and families have been the focus of numerous development projects in recent years. However, the capability of organizations to fulfill their purpose and perform their tasks has remained weak. This is indicated by, for example, the increase in the number of children taken into custody and the usage levels of psychiatric services for adolescents. Challenges in the development work of public service systems include the presence of disparate policies, a lack of collaboration between services, externally guided or top-down initiated development projects. There is a need for structures that enable development work to emerge from organizations’ internal needs, thus facilitating the use of employees’ expertise as vital part of knowledge management.
New information technology tool called Itla View was developed to facilitate practices for the internal renewal of public service organizations aimed at children, young people, and families, including non-profit organizations (NGOs). The development was conducted as a part of Itla’s Collective Impact (CI) work that seeks to help develop public service organizations. The CI framework aims to conduct practical actions to enable effective multidisciplinary work and knowledge management.
Itla View is a digital crowdsourcing platform and working model intended to support knowledge management processes and systems change to help public service organizations fulfil their purpose and perform their tasks in a rapidly changing environment. The fundamental concept of the tool is to help multidisciplinary service organizations make use of the knowledge that already exists within them for development purposes rather than initiate reforms through external or top-down approaches.
In practice Itla View helps local services for families with children to manage better using data, to anticipate the need for corrective services and identify opportunities for preventive work. It is a digital tool that allows different actors to form a shared holistic picture of the well-being of the children and families in their region by gathering observations sent by field actors on the daily lives of children and families. In the tool, artificial intelligence is used to identify connections between various observations and to combine them with relevant indicator data and news headlines. The tool brings together tacit and explicit knowledge in one database and provides an AI-assisted platform for knowledge processing. Additionally, it is used for sharing refined data to grassroots level, planning and implementation of initiatives and gathering feedback of their impact and the direction of development of the examined phenomena. By utilizing crowdsourcing, the tool leverages the collective intelligence of actors across organizational boundaries promoting collective, knowledge-based learning and organizational self-renewal.
In the city of Tampere, two family centers started piloting the actual tool in April 2023 and from October 2023 onwards a total of five family centers are involved in piloting the use of Itla View in Tampere.
The evaluation phase will commence during first half of 2024. The evaluation will include platform user data, as well as surveys and stakeholder interviews.
We have completed one reviewed and accepted academic article describing the theoretical background and design of the tool.
Further, Itla View has aroused interest from Itla Children's foundations collaborative stakeholders involved in Itla's Collective Impact work. There is a growing interest in implementing the tool in various wellbeing counties in Finland as a part of developing services for families with children through enhanced knowledge management.
The development process was launched, facilitated and led by Itla Children's foundation. The process involved various participants, including researchers from the University of Oulu and Tampere and professionals from public sector services and NGO's in the city Tampere. Two private companies were also involved: Hahmota Ltd. (responsible for the design and technical implementation of the web platform) and VXT Research Ltd. (handling semantic search and backend processing).
Itla View was developed using co-creation methods. It meant engaging various stakeholders and relying on collaborative teamwork and open communication. This collaboration also involved external experts and researchers from diverse fields. The process encouraged the sharing of ideas, knowledge, and insights to collectively generate new solutions for local communities.
Tacit knowledge possessed by grassroots-level fieldworkers, who routinely interact with service users (children, young people, and families) hold significant importance. It offers real-time and highly localized information essential for anticipating service requirements, formulating preventive strategies, and implementing targeted interventions within specific communities. Crowdsourcing was considered a way to involve a diverse group of grassroots-level actors from local communities in the organization’s development efforts. In this way, a channel of communication between the grassroots-level actors and decision makers was created.
Platform use numbers for 7 months: admin platforms in use - 5; downloads of app - 99, recorded observations - 86.
The power of the tool will be determined by its uptake by a large number of fieldworkers. If they do not feel they benefit enough from participating, it may be difficult to engage users in the working model and thus to gather enough information to support the knowledge-management. To maintain users’ motivation and engagement, the implementation of the tool must be done carefully. It is important to determine the needs and expectations related to the use of the tool and to openly explain how the information gathered is used in practice. It is important to ensure that the communication between grassroots-level actors and the management team is genuinely reciprocal and respectful.
It is imperative to decide early on to which existing management structure to apply for initiatives such as the Itla View. There needs to be management structures that support multidisciplinary leadership and involve different stakeholders. Leadership from all organizations engaged in multidisciplinary work needs to be involved from the beginning in order for grass-roots level actors to be able to commit and have permission to use the tool. Designated employees with knowledge management duties and those who can act as an admin user of the platform need to be recognized. The review of the accumulated observations and processing of feedback needs to be a regular item on the management team's agenda for supporting constant communication.
Itla View has the potential to provide many previously untapped benefits of knowledge management in the public service sector. By crowdsourcing observations and creating conditions to manage information, this tool provides management decision makers with insight into emerging phenomena related to children, young people and families (even if the signals of change are still weak). Itla View platform and the working model can be applied to any field of public services concerning other population groups (elderly or working age adults). The gathering of feedback and communication channel between field workers and management can also be applied into different phenomena and initiatives.
Itla View as a tool and a working model that has been developed to meet the needs of public sector knowledge management processes. The development of such a tool needs to involve local stakeholders and to be done as an iterative co-creation process, so that it meets the needs of local public sector service providers.
It is recommended to plan the implementation process of the tool to be adaptive and to provide extensive support measures such as training- and info sessions, communication materials (posters with QR code), workshops and nudging incentives to create favourable ground for success of the implementation. Creative use of the platform is to be promoted to enable the iterative development of the tool and the working model in the future.
Budget: Not disclosed
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