The Sola calculation tool allows estimate the economic impact of 25 distinct social phenomena at municipal, regional and national level. Impact assessments at one, five and ten year intervals can lead decision-makers to better understand how to invest in wellbeing and accelerate impact investing. Results of the tool have been used in several municipalities as part of health and wellbeing promotion. A MOOC course has been developed and similar calculation tools are recently being used in other contexts.
Innovation Summary
Innovation Overview
Problem: Difficulty in generating evaluation data and underuse of impact investing
There is a broad range of national, regional and local data available and there is an increasing need for evaluation data, particularly relating to cost-effectiveness. However, not all actors and measures have realistic evaluation data on built into their activities. In a rapidly changing society, reports quickly become outdated. Frequently and data from evaluation reports are not comparable with the data presented to decision-makers.
Evaluation information (and its production) can act as a bottleneck increasingly impacting on investment. If evaluation data production could be speeded up, social investments may also increase.
Innovation supports preparation, assessment and investment
The novel, scalable Sola calculation tool can provide cost-effective data for a variety of social phenomena and interventions. The impact modelling achieved by the calculation tool can be generated using only two input measurements. I.e. the size of a single age group in a region and the percentage of the population affected by a single phenomenon, in addition to specific (nationa, regional or local) budget figures.
The Sola calculation tool was funded by the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health for use in Finnish municipalities and wellbeing services regions. The project, coordinated by the Wellbeing Services County of Central Finland, is funded by the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health and the tool is available free of charge to public and volunteer actors. The objectives of the project are:
To support knowledge management in promotion of well-being
2) To provide regions with a free tool to assess social phenomena alleviation’s cost-effectiveness
3) To enhance social investment
The methodology combines registration, surveillance and measurement of regional data. Key to this is the idea of using the research literature to identify the (economic) consequences of a single phenomenon, for example regular physical activity among young people.
The chief users of the tool are well-being experts, senior officials and citizens. Although Sola was developed for municipalities and well-being services counties, organizations of different sizes and three ministries have used the methodology as part of the preparation of regional management. Encouraged by Sola, the National Institute for Health and Welfare has commenced the development of a similar tool.
The Finnish Centre of Competence in Information Technology —has developed the first language models for building similar tools using AI technology, enabling both the maintenance of Sola's data and the development of similar tools in the future.
The University of Eastern Finland has published a MOOC course on welfare economics, knowledge management and the use of the Sola tool. This is important because it will help in disseminating the innovation.
According to investors, Sola can enhance impact investing
Innovation Description
What Makes Your Project Innovative?
Current applications for monitoring of well-being and data management focus mainly on the compilation of register data. Sola in contrast enriches register-based data with research and service cost measurement. price lists. This will enable the construction of regional impact modelling in all Finnish municipalities and welfare areas. A function has also been built into the tool to also estimate the cost impact of interventions.
The production of evaluation data (including cost-effectiveness) will be fundamentally changed with Sola, as users will be empowered to produce evaluation data themselves. This allows for a more precise through regional price lists and allows operators to introduce new content, for example, in response to changes in policy.
According to officials from various Finnish wellbeing service counties, municipalities, regions and ministries, and WHO and OECD Wise centre representatives of the OECD Wise Centre, a similar evaluation tool is not currently available.
What is the current status of your innovation?
• Identification of Problems and Opportunities – identifying areas needing innovation.
• Generating Ideas or Designing Solutions – generating ideas to respond to both problems and or opportunities
• Developing Proposals - turning ideas into business cases that can be implemented and measured
• Implementing the innovation
• Evaluation - understanding whether the innovative initiative has delivered what was needed
• Scalability and dissemination - using what was learnt to inform other projects and understanding how the innovation can be applied in other contexts
The evaluation methodology itself has been developed and tested in both academic and development settings since 2018. The first version of the Sola calculation tool was developed in 2020 and tested in several municipalities of Central Finland with encouraging results. In this project, version 1.0 of Sola was developed.
Current Sola tool is version 2.0.
Innovation Development
Collaborations & Partnerships
The assessment methodology was developed by Sosped Keskus company and has been developed further since 2018 with NGO’s and municipalities.
Since 2018 Finnish municipalities and wellbeing services counties have played a central role in the development of the Sola calculation tool.
The Wellbeing Services County of Central Finland and the University of Eastern Finland have been involved in the development of Sola from its commencement.
Experts from four different ministries have given feedback
Users, Stakeholders & Beneficiaries
Municipalities will be given the means to produce evaluation data themselves.
Wellbeing services counties will have the means to make wiser and more far-reaching decisions and to understand the opportunity costs of different phenomena.
Organizations will have the means to demonstrate the effectiveness of the Sola tool in relation to their own activities.
The well-being of citizens will be improved because regions will invest in it and funding from NGOs can be secured.
Innovation Reflections
Results, Outcomes & Impacts
Finnish municipalities and several welfare regions have adopted Sola.
The results of Sola have been used in assessments, budget preparation and health promotion plans.
Two different events have been organized on the governance of wellbeing service areas.
The National Institute for Health and Welfare and the Finnish Fire Brigades have started to build similar tools for themselves.
A MOOC course promoting the Sola tool has been developed.
The first language models (AI) have been developed.
FUTURE
The data to be evaluated are aligned with the SDG targets and linked to the evaluation and promotion of the national sustainability strategy.
The tool is being prepared for export to EU level using Eurostat and WordBank data.
Challenges and Failures
The methodological challenges have been related to the lack of ready-made means to assess the issues to be evaluated in the project. These include long-term (from five to ten years) cumulative social impacts. The evaluation methodology and principles have been developed in collaboration with Finland's best professionals.
Data challenges have been related to the fact that public registers have not provided information on all phenomena that are required to be assessed according to the social quality theoretical framework. For this reason the project contacted the Ministry of the Interior and obtained from them classified data.
Usability challenges have been addressed through continuous improvement and regular weekly training sessions.
Conditions for Success
University cooperation and theoretical frameworks supporting indicator selection (e.g. the Social Quality Framework)
The Project/activity responsible for the development of the calculation tool. Should be a public body with an in- depth understanding of the local government and have good networks. The role of the coordinator involves commitment of the test areas (municipalities and welfare regions, etc.) in the development of the tool and this body should also have overall leadership of the process itself.
Cooperation with the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health/Ministry of Finance to enable the tool to be disseminated and used more widely.
The company/other neutral entity responsible for developing the tool.
Replication
1. The National Institute for Health and Welfare is building a direct copy of the Sola calculation tool, which it will use to evaluate the effectiveness of the European Social Fund it coordinates.
This project will build an open calculation tool to assess the cost impact of measures to promote inclusion and employment (project).
The tool will group the benefits in such a way that the user will be able to identify how much a single action benefits for national sectors/ stakeholders.
2. In a another, Fire Brigade project, the calculation tool will be directly integrated into information management systems. This will make it possible to assess the impact of Fire Brigades at national, regional or fire brigade level.
Lessons Learned
The production of evaluation tools that demonstrate social value is also linked to the adoption of a new mindset. As officials and managers learn how to use the tools, they also learn that they themselves are independently capable of producing evaluation data. This brings with it perspectives of responsibility and opportunity. For this reason, transparency and reliable scientific sources are very important for the expansion of the tool.
The strength of evaluation tools such as Sola is that they integrate different types of information in an easy-to-use format. In this way, the information can be put to good use and support decision-making.
Status:
- Generating Ideas or Designing Solutions - finding and filtering ideas to respond to the problem or opportunity
- Developing Proposals - turning ideas into business cases that can be assessed and acted on
- Implementation - making the innovation happen
Innovation provided by:
Files:
- 2023 ABM Abstract Sola Presentation v201023all_ok Sola's presentation in WHO's healthy cities network
- 6_SOLA_Measuring social value (ENG)-esityskalvotOK_pdf
- hyvaks_SOLA_brochure_eng_0823
Date Published:
27 June 2024