Finland’s Presidency of the Council of the EU
EU chief information officers addressed the joint objectives for promoting digitalisation in their meeting

Digitalisation is one of the key topics of Finland’s Presidency of the Council of the European Union. At the meeting held at the House of the Estates, the EU’s chief information officers discussed the joint objectives for promoting digitalisation and current topics common to all.

The meeting was hosted by Sami Kivivasara, Head of the Unit for Information Policy at the Ministry of Finance.

“The common goal of the EU Member States is to strengthen digitalisation in public administration to enable cross-border activities and to support Europe's competitiveness and sustainable growth. The public debate highlighted current topics common to all EU countries: the human-centred orientation of digital services, the utilisation of information and ethical issues related to data and artificial intelligence. Finland has taken these topics forward strongly, so this is of great interest in the world,” said Kivivasara.

Cooperation between EU Member States even more important

The agenda of the meeting included discussion on the eIDAS identification project led by the European Commission. eIDAS is an EU Regulation designed to ensure up-to-date and internationally accepted standards for electronic identification.

“The aim is to enable the use of electronic public services across the national borders in Europe and thus facilitate the transactions and mobility of persons and businesses. If you are to move to another EU country for work, you can start using electronic services in your home country. Chief information officers agreed that corresponding EU-level projects should be developed in future as well,” Kivivasara said.

In the meeting, Kivivasara also highlighted the importance of well-functioning cooperation between the chief information officers in the Member States.

“We also discussed today how to strengthen the network of chief information officers. We face the same challenges in all Member States and on the EU level: it is therefore important that by continuously working together, we seek to find common opportunities for improving public administration services.”

Finland leads the activities of the Council of the European Union until the end of 2019. The meeting of EU Chief Information Officers was part of the Finnish Presidency programme.

Inquiries:

Sami Kivivasara, Head of Unit, Senior Adviser for Legislative Affairs, Ministry of Finance, tel. +358 29 553 0023, sami.kivivasara(at)vm.fi