1–2 October 2024
The conference will take place on Tuesday, 1, and Wednesday, 2 October 2024, in person at venues around Helsinki, Finland. The conference’s main theme is ‘Systems change and futures’.
Registration for the conference is now closed. Public servants from over 30 countries are expected to join the conference.
The conference will be held in person on October 1 and 2. It will take place in the EEST (Eastern European Summer Time) time zone. The conference’s official language is English, which includes all talks, sessions, and workshops. Translation and interpreting services will not be available.
There is an informal dinner for participants arriving on Monday, September 30.
The programme is organised in tracks with parallel sessions:
The full programme with session descriptions and speaker introductions is now available in the Programme Booklet.
| 09:00 | Registration |
| 10:00 | Start and Keynote speakers |
| 12:00 | Lunch |
| 13:05 | 1st session |
| 13:50 | Break |
| 14:05 | 2nd session |
| 14:50 | Break |
| 15:05 | 3rd Session |
| 15:50 | Close |
| 16:00 | Finish |
| 18:00 | Dinner & stories: 10 years of design in/for government |
| 09:00 | Registration |
| 09:15 | Keynote |
| 10:00 | Break |
| 10:15 | Morning session |
| 12:00 | Lunch / travel time |
| 13:30 | Afternoon sessions |
| 15:30 | Closing remarks |
| 16:00 | Finish |
| 16:15 | Twilight Toasts (After-conference drinks) |
| 18:00 | SDN Opening reception* |
| 19:30 | Independent dinner groups |
*The Service Design Network’s global conference will also take place in Helsinki, Finland, from 2 to 4 October. The Opening Reception is only for participants attending the SDN conference.
The conference will be held in three different venues:
Day 1 - October 1
Day 2 - October 2
You can find the Conference map with all venues on Google Maps.
Please collect your conference badge at Kalasatama (Työpajankatu 8) on Tuesday, 1 October, or at Otaniemi (Maarintie 8) on Wednesday, 2 October.
Tuesday, 1 October at Kalasatama (Työpajankatu 8)
Wednesday, 2 October at Otaniemi (Maarintie 8)
We recommend arriving at the venues by public transportation (bus, tram, or metro). You can download the HSL app for checking routes and buying tickets.
If you prefer to get to the venue by taxi, we recommend downloading Uber or Bolt apps or getting a taxi from the following companies: Kovanen, Taksi Helsinki, or Lähitaksi. Costs will vary depending on the time of day and the type of taxi you take.
All conference venues are equipped with parking areas for both cars and bikes, are fully accessible in compliance with all accessibility laws, and provide drinkable tap water on-site, ensuring a welcoming environment for everyone.
Your conference registration gives you free access to all the sessions (subject to capacity and availability), but you still need to order tickets in advance to participate in them.
You can only order 1 ticket per session by visiting our registration website and logging in with the email address you used when you created or activated your account on Eventive. Compile your conference programme by choosing which sessions to attend. Click on “Order Ticket” under the name of the session and confirm. The tickets will be sent to your email address and available on the registration website’s “My Tickets” page (Eventive).
When attending a session, please present your digital ticket or registration badge at each conference room’s entrance. If a session is sold out, choose another one. There are plenty of great things to do at the conference.
If you are a speaker or a session host, you don’t need a ticket for your own session. We have already reserved a seat for you.
All participants can cancel or transfer their session tickets until 1 day before the session starts.
If you haven’t created or activated your account on Eventive yet, please check your spam folder or inbox and search for an Eventive email. If you don’t find any email from Eventive or have questions about the registration system, please contact us by email or using the Slack channel #participants-helsinki-2024
If you travel by plane to Helsinki Airport, you can get to the city centre:
By train:Commuter trains I and P are a fast and convenient way of travelling between the city centre and the airport. The journey takes approximately 30 minutes. From the train station at Helsinki Airport, you can walk directly to your terminal without going outside. You will need an ABC ticket to get to or from the airport. Single tickets and day tickets can be purchased using the HSL mobile app or from HSL ticket machines, R-kiosks, and many other sales points throughout the city. Tickets cannot be purchased onboard commuter trains.
By bus:Buses 415N, 431N, 562, 570, and 600 also operate between the airport and the city centre. To get to or from the airport, you will need an ABC ticket, which you can purchase from HSL ticket machines, HSL mobile app, or sales points like R-kiosk.
By taxi:Taxi travel between Helsinki Airport and the city centre takes approximately 20 minutes and costs €40-45.
If you travel by boat, there are daily ferry services to Helsinki from Tallinn, Estonia by Tallink Silja Line, Viking Line, and Eckerö Line, and to Stockholm, Sweden by Tallink Silja Line and Viking Line. Helsinki can also be reached by ferry from Germany by Finnlines. All the ferry companies also offer the possibility to take a car with you. Information on the different passenger terminals can be found on the Port of Helsinki website.
All Helsinki ports are suitable for international cruise ships. Most of them are easy to reach on foot, by public transport, taxi, shuttle buses, or sightseeing buses. For further details, see the map of cruise quays by the Port of Helsinki.
Trams are a convenient way to get to ferry terminals:
If you travel from other cities in Finland, there are excellent train connections to Helsinki from all major towns in Finland as well as Lapland, and buses to Kamppi, a centrally located bus station that can also be reached by metro.
There is a huge variety of tourist accommodation in Helsinki.
You can search hundreds of hotels, B&Bs, and hotels online. If you want to stay near the conference venues, search for:
And these are our conference team recommendations:
If you are looking for accessible hotels, the official city tourist information has a list of accessible hotels in Helsinki.
There is no end of things to see, do, eat, and drink in Helsinki, but here are a few recommendations from our local team to get you started exploring:
Daytime temperatures are around 10°C (50°F), while nights can cool down to about 3°C (37°F). It could rain in October, so pack a warm jacket and an umbrella, just in case.
Remember that you can attend two conferences during the same week. We selected the date and location for this conference to enable participants to attend the Service Design Network’s global conference, which will take place in Helsinki, Finland, on 3-4 October.
Unfortunately, we can’t cover any travel expenses for participants, but if you need tips on how to get sponsors, feel free to email us.
This year, we have opened a private Slack channel #participants-helsinki-2024 for all the participants and speakers to get to know each other and book meetings in advance. This Slack channel will also work as an information channel before and during the conference. You will get an invitation to Slack and the Conference private channel at the beginning of September at the latest.
Lastly, please read our Code of Conduct to understand the behaviour we expect from our participants and speakers during the conference.
Systems change and futures
How might we work across organisational boundaries and address complex systemic challenges? And how might we design for a proactive government and support emerging futures thinking in government?
We want to bridge the gap between the practice of designing services and policies in government and the ideas of systems change and futures. We set out to discover best practices and case studies of breaking silos and zooming out.
Designers in government are working more across organisational boundaries, instead of within one organisation or for discrete problems and incremental change in services. User needs cross sectors and organisations. In order to deliver end-to-end journeys, we need to work with several teams, units, organisations and even beyond government - with volunteer organisations and the private sector. We are zooming out to take a holistic perspective of strategic challenges, policy outcomes and missions that require a systems-level change.
After a decade of active designing in government, the role of design and designers is changing. Our contexts are filled with political, economic and security uncertainties, climate change and new technologies. We are faced with short-termism and cutting costs while promoting long-term thinking and imagining inclusive and diverse futures. At the conference, we look for experiments and critical thinking pushing the boundaries around futures.
The conference will host participants from 30 countries and 90 government organisations.
Email the conference team if you have any questions.
The International Design in Government community is a group of design-minded people from governments all over the world. The purpose is to learn from each other, share best practice and design patterns, and discuss shared challenges so that we can try and work on them together.
If you work in government and you’d like to join the community, the conference and monthly calls, you can apply to join the Slack group.
The community is open to designers, user researchers, content designers, accessibility experts and other design-minded people. In order to join, you must be working embedded in government at any level: national, state or city — this includes consultancies that contract solely for government.
Email the community management team if you have any questions.
