When thousands of farmers are invited to join Finland’s largest single water protection project, everything must go smoothly. Southwest Finland ELY Centre, the KIPSI project coordinator, is delighted with an online service created in record time by Gofore.

The Archipelago Sea is the only Finnish marine area in which the phosphorus load is continuously growing. The aim of the ongoing KIPSI project is to reduce this load by treating 50,000–80,000 hectares of arable land with gypsum over the next three to five years.

“Gypsum retains phosphorus, reducing the runoff of suspended solids by up to 50% over a 5-year period. A total of 3,400 farmers in Southwest Finland are being invited to contribute to environmental protection by ordering gypsum for their fields,” says Pekka Salminen, who is in charge of the KIPSI project at the ELY Centre for Southwest Finland.

Accurate information on where the gypsum will be spread is required for coordination of the massive post-harvest logistical chain. Farmers will use the online service to report such information.

It was clear from the outset that the solution developed should be as easy as possible to use.

“Tools cannot be the weak link in water protection. One farmer may order gypsum for hundreds of parcels of land, so clicking on individual plots or reporting numbers of fields via the service is out of the question.”

New service on a record schedule

Things don’t always go as planned: the original idea of using the existing online application system for agricultural support (the VIPU service) could not be realised for the KIPSI project.
“We wound up needing an entirely new online service in just over a month. We had the Finnish Food Authority’s data on parcels of land. However, this had to be further processed for compatibility with the KIPSI service.”

Gofore did not hesitate to get involved with this socially important work, despite the fact that projects of this kind usually take several months.

“We trusted in close cooperation with the customer, our strong experience of other online services for the public administration, and our agility. Progress was shown through demos at weekly Teams meetings, and everything was tested as soon as it was completed,” says Minna Kytölä, Project Manager at Gofore.

Strong suomi.fi authentication is used to sign into the service launched on 20 April 2020. Land parcels can be selected from a map for gypsum spreading.

Meaningful and agile collaboration

Salminen says that the result has met expectations.

“The service has been in use for a few weeks and has worked smoothly. We can now catch our breath and confirm that everything has gone just as it should.”

The Gofore team is also delighted by the project’s success. Kytölä mentions the buzz provided by the huge social importance of the project.

“Every project and customer is important to us, but this project was special. We thought it was fantastic to help protect the Baltic Sea.”

Salminen shares the same positive vibe.

“It was great to work with the Gofore people. They threw themselves into the work and were agile, fast, and highly skilled. It was clear that succeeding was important to everyone.”

Now, during the second phase of the work, tools are being created for the processing and reporting of applications after Midsummer. Gypsum will be spread on the fields right after the harvest.