Interview with Martin Director of Digital Projects at the Danish Rescue Society
In recent years, Gture has worked closely with the Lifesaving Society on various digital projects. The Rescue Society's vision is that "no one should drown". This vision means saving lives, salvaging assets and prevention. Today, there is more technology, data and information than ever before, enabling the use of digital tools to achieve this vision.
RS launched "The Digital Lifeboat" in March 2021, which will help save even more lives on and by the sea. Gture is proud to have been part of this journey and has developed several concepts and services together with RS. One of the concepts is RS Sjøliv, which helps to digitize the Rescue Society. This is done by offering various activities for people at sea and alerting users if someone needs help or advice. In this way, the platform creates a safecommunity for everyone who enjoys being in and around the Norwegian coast and supports the overall purpose of saving lives . Another service is "RS Båtkort" which has a focus on increasing knowledge at sea by digitalising maritime courses and certifications. The platform will quality assure the maritime competence, not only the knowledge of people at sea, but also increase the quality of training.
We had a chat with Martin Fuhr Bolstad, Director of Projects at the Norwegian Society for Sea Rescue. Among other things, he has led the development at Langgrunn and is working on developing targeted digital services such as Sjøliv and Båtkort.
Martin, what is the best thing about working with the Lifesaving Society?
It's working for a purpose that is easy to identify with and working with people who identify with the same thing. It's very easy to see that you're working towards the same goal and that's not always the case in a business. It's fun to be able to use your capacity for something that benefits everyone.
Can you tell us a bit about why digitalisation is important in RS and what you see as important in the future in terms of digital opportunities?
Digitalisation can be done out of either necessity or desire - or even both. I think it's mainly about taking opportunities. I see others saying things like "if you don't innovate, you're out of the market in a way". We are lucky in the RS that with the lifeboats we have a capacity that has lasted for 100 years - which can change, but which can also last for another 100 years.
With the Digital Lifeboat, we are thinking about how we can use technology to achieve the vision of 'no drowning'. It's about giving people more knowledge and skills, and giving people the right knowledge. If you have it, you can make better use of information, and you can make rescue operations more accurate and more likely to succeed. We can also leverage technology and digitalisation to make operations at sea more sustainable.
The short answer to the question is that we want to digitise so that nobody drowns.
What do you think is important for the success of the Digital Lifeboat?
Create good solutions that those at sea find useful for them. People are much more likely to adopt technology that they find fun to use than technology that is only used when they are in distress. You need to bake this safety technology with services that are useful to those at sea all the time. It is important to understand who is at sea and how they use the sea, and we need to inspire people to learn. A lot lies in knowledge and skills, providing relevant information to prevent situations from happening.
Can you tell us a bit about your plans for the future?
This summer we have had a test period and I think we have learned some interesting lessons - perhaps most interesting is what we have observed with the "chat" on the Sjøliv platform. We see that in Sjøliv, if someone asks for something, they get answers and they get good answers. The other thing is that the threshold for asking questions is a bit high. So how do you motivate those who are at sea to ask people around them more?
We also see that it is important to think about user groups and their customer journeys. Kayakers have one need, sailors have another need, and parents at sea or young people have other needs - so how do we create good and unique services for them? I think we should think along the lines of looking for very specific user groups and see how we can facilitate them. We've also talked about making progress in generally using data in better ways and making it available for different external and internal services.
Finally, what has it been like working with Gture?
"It's exciting to see that an organisation like the Norwegian Rescue Society can benefit from working with the kind of network model that Gture has. That we get the expertise we need, when we need it. I don't think we would have been able to go straight ahead and find developers abroad, so I think it's exciting to work in a hybrid model with Gture locally and the partner network. I think it's a model that the Rescue Society should look at how we can get more out of it.
To see more visit: https://sjoliv.rs.no/explore
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