Digital public services in Finland remain at highest EU standard

Finland is superbly positioned to promote the digital transition, with clear strengths in social trust and citizen digital skills, according to a report published by the European Commission.

Some 82 per cent of people in Finland have basic digital skills, while the EU average is only 55.6 per cent. Measures are nevertheless still required to ensure the future availability of ICT sector specialists, said a government press release on Wednesday.

The European Commission has published its annual State of the Digital Decade report, in which it assesses the progress of Member States in applying digitalisation and issues recommendations for further action.

The particular strengths of Finland specified in the report are comprehensive basic digital skills and digitalisation in small and medium-sized businesses.

The Commission finds that Finland is making a very strong contribution to the objectives and targets of the EU digital decade, which promote competitiveness, resilience, sovereignty, European values and climate action.

An individual country report finds that Finland made notable progress in deploying fixed one-gigabit broadband connections in 2023, even though whole-country network coverage was also recognised as a challenge.

The report also notes that the digital public services provided to citizens and businesses in Finland are still at the highest standard in the EU. There is nevertheless room to enhance e-health services and ensure that access to all digital public services remains at the highest possible level.

The EU Digital Decade 2030 programme requires all Member States to prepare national roadmaps to promote digitalisation and achieve common goals. The country report now published is based on an analysis by the Commission and a roadmap submitted by Finland in December. The Finnish roadmap is in turn based on the national digital compass, which has also been submitted to the Commission.

The Commission report notes the highly ambitious character of Finland’s national digital compass and the significant investments made by Finland to achieve the objectives and targets of the digital decade. The individual country report stresses that all of Finland’s goals are aligned with the EU 2030 objectives.

The national digital compass is a tool that guides the development of digitalisation in Finland. The aim is for digitalisation to make people’s lives easier and facilitate business operations. The digital compass includes the objectives and targets for promoting the digitalisation of society as a whole arranged in four areas: skills, digital public services, business digitalisation and digital infrastructure. The Finnish digital compass implements the objectives and targets assigned in the EU digital compass, while also including supplementary national goals and themes.

The Digital Decade report urges Member States to prioritise development of the European digital identity wallet, both from the perspective of users and that of private and public sector service providers.

Development of a national wallet solution has begun in Finland under the guidance of a Ministry of Finance project launched in spring 2024. Finland is also actively involved in piloting several wallet use cases in joint EU cross-border wallet trials. An amended EU Regulation requires Member States to provide a digital wallet satisfying certain requirements by 2026.