The City of Kouvola, a mid-sized city in southern Finland, assessed its maturity in the utilisation of spatial data with Spatineo Roadmap product as a part of the ‘Management Desktop’ project in the city administration. The need for the assessment arose from the goal to increase the utilisation of spatial data in the processes and services in the city. The spatial data working group of the city coordinates the development of the utilisation of spatial data and has created a development plan for the utilisation of spatial data for 2015. The development work is a part of the ongoing Knowledge Management project which aims at increasing the use of business information in the decision making in the city. In order to focus the development resources allocated to spatial data on the right areas and to assess their effect, it turned out to be essential to first define the starting level of the utilisation of spatial data.
The maturity assessment was based on an online questionnaire that was sent to 220 people working in different positions in the organisation. The responses were got from 108 employees. The assessment gave the city extensive information on the current state of the utilisation of spatial data, as well as on the successes and development areas. According to the assessment, the spatial data management and the accessibility of the data were at a good level. Whereas the following areas were chosen as primary future development areas:
- Internal communication about the possibilities of spatial data and training on how to use spatial data
- Increasing the utilisation of spatial data at management level
- Utilisation of spatial data in operations planning in welfare services
