City of Helsinki: Online video services for citizens
Helsinki: a leader in digital public services
Helsinki, the capital of Finland, is the nation’s cultural, administrative, and economic center. The region is home to over 1.5 million people and nearly 800,000 jobs. With close to 39,000 employees, the City of Helsinki is one of Finland’s largest employers and a recognized leader in digitalization and citizen services.
For more information, visit http://www.hel.fi
Helsinki-kanava (Helsinki Channel) is the city’s online video service, offering live and on-demand content for citizens, visitors, and employees. In 2019, videos on Helsinki-kanava were viewed more than 400,000 times, including 75 live broadcasts and tens of thousands of views. The most watched video was “Living in an apartment building,” engaging visitors more than 36,000 times. The most watched live broadcast was the “Mayor’s Independence Day for Fourth-graders,” which was watched more than 24,000 times.
Visit Helsinki-kanava at https://www.helsinkikanava.fi/fi/
Summary
Helsinki’s previous video platform had reached its limits. The city needed a modern, scalable, and accessible solution to manage and distribute video for both public and internal communications.
Through a public tender process, Icareus Video Cloud was selected as the foundation for Helsinki-kanava, the city’s central hub for video and podcast publishing.
Product
Challenge
Providing reliable and objective public communication
Helsinki wanted to ensure that citizens receive trustworthy and brand-safe information directly from official sources. Using commercial social media platforms was not suitable — engagement there is short-lived, and content control limited.
Versatile use across departments
The city produces and distributes many types of video content: live streams of council meetings, press conferences, cultural events, educational materials, and internal training videos. The platform had to support all of these, along with adaptive streaming, captioning, and multilingual accessibility.
Technical and operational requirements
The solution needed to be secure, scalable for peak events, integrated with legacy data systems, and easy for non-technical staff to use. Brand consistency and accessibility were also key.
Solution
Centralized video portal: Helsinki-kanava
The new Helsinki-kanava service brings together all video content from various city departments. It supports both public and internal videos, live broadcasts, and podcasts – creating a single, unified platform for city communications.
Custom-branded and responsive design
Using Icareus Video Cloud’s customizable templates, the portal was built to match Helsinki’s visual identity. It offers a high-quality, accessible user experience in Finnish, Swedish, and English (WCAG AA).
Secure internal communications
Content intended only for city employees is distributed through the city’s intranet, with access restrictions managed directly in Icareus Video Cloud.
High scalability and ease of use
The platform scales automatically to meet demand – for instance, the Vappu 2020 live concert reached over 100,000 viewers.
More than 100 communications professionals across city departments use the system daily to publish and manage videos without technical assistance.
Results
The City of Helsinki now has a unified, brand-safe video platform that supports both external and internal communications.
It allows the city to engage citizens more effectively, streamline workflows, and serve audiences who increasingly prefer video content.