Emilia Olkanen

Eyes are starting to feel sore and my head begins to bend but I have an irresistable urge to type down a few sentences. Greetings from the first city council assembly after the summer break. The issues were supposed to be quite huge ones today but as predicted, the ICT outsourcing decision was delayed. There are  good reasons for changing the current business model of the ICT center of Tampere city, since there is a law change in the air, and the current model will not be able to function anymore in the future. The communal enterprises will not be able to interfere the private markets soon in the future which means that Tampere city could not sell its ICT services outside anymore. At the moment over one third of the services go outside. As an in-house corporation the sale could be at maximum 10 % which would not be enough when considering the current rates. With the outsourcing model under discussion the strategic information management would stay and the rest would be sold to another service provider. The scale is definately big in comparison: of 150 ICT center employees only 10 would stay. Many worried workers came to listen to the council meeting today. After all, I am content that the decicion was delayed. The city government has discussed the issue during the summer but for a normal counciller the decision came rather quickly.

Other important issues today concerned e.g. allocating some more money for organizing extra groups for kids who could not enter any education after the elementary school. There was a big number of them this year (300) but this issue will be repaired with the budget addition. Many things were discussed, issues related and not related to the agenda, as usual. After several hours biking in Tampere still raised some emotions. Biking in Hämeenkatu has been a hot potato for ages, and it continues to be one. Some councillors made bikers sound like hard criminals, and they were claimed to cause a lot of injuries for innocent elderly and disabled persons. Someone even called cyclists with the name “terrorist”. The truth is that Hämeenkatu is dangerous without proper biker lanes but it is not the fault of the cyclists. I left the office building with a smile on my face and tummy hurting after laughing so much. I must, however,  admit I am a little worried of the council prestige in front of the audience after such farces as the meetings tend to be after some hours.

Now good night, I definately will sleep tight after the latest entertainment.

P.S. You can listen to the city council meetings on Radio Moreeni (98,4 MHz). Older meetings can be found in the Tampere city archive in MP3 form.

Kuvassa vuokrattavia kaupunkipyöriä. / In the photo rentable city bikes in Brussels.

Kuva: Sanna Huikuri  

The blog is occasionally written in English.