Finnish Open Governnment weeks include trust, migrants participation and an Open government Fair in the ministry
Finland’s Open Government weeks (5.- 13.3.2018) are part of the Open Government Partnership work. During the weeks several events and workshops are organised by the Ministry of Finance.
Open Government work in Finland covers the whole public sector. In the current action plan the emphasis is on understandability, access to information and open regions.
City of Oulu is one of the cities were openness is a core value of work and where it is systematical-ly developed through the whole city organisation. The Open data –programme of the Population Register Centre opens the public data also for private sector to use in business.
Open government international partners thank and encourage Finland
OECD’s new open government recommendation gives guidelines to future open government work also in Finland. OECD’s Alessandro Bellantoni encourages Finland to be the first country that would full fill all the ten criteria of the recommendation.
Open Government Partnership’s (OGP) Helen Turek praises Finland’s openness. She states however that the there is still a lot to do in the new frontiers of open government and inclusiveness such as direct participationa and participative budgeting.
OECD's video (MoF youtubecanal)
OGP's video (MoF youtubecanal)
Open Government Fair on 9th of March
Open Government Fair is an event, where several different open government actors present their work. The Fair is open to anybody interested in open government; civil servants, citizens and me-dia. In the Fair open government work, clear language, democracy.fi – services, open data, partic-ipation games, open region, ethics and integrity work, innovation work and the web service to explore state spending are among the issues presented at the fair.
Trust workshop on Tuesday 13th of March
The Open government programme organises a trust workshop on Tuesday 13th of March at Hotel Arthur. This workshop concentrates especially on institutional trust. On one hand in Finland citizens’ trust towards political institutions is internationally on a high level as is the case in other Nordic countries also. On the other hand the suspicion felt towards political deci-sion-makers can been seen as a central, even necessary part of wellbeing of democracy. Should we look at the quality of trust instead of the quantity of trust: on what kind of in-formation the does the assessment of political decision-makers base on and do citizens separate these institutions from the people working in the, when assessing the reliability of political trust?
Workshop on participation of migrants on Wednesday 7th of March
In this workshop the main theme is participation of migrants and the possibilities of participation. The workshop studies ways of participation and maps out paths for further development work. Based on the results the work continues with interested organisations.
Finland joined the Open Government Partnership on 2013 and the Open government week is part of the implementation of Finland’s third Open Government action plan.
More information
OECD/Open Government
Open Government Partnership
Financial counsellor Katju Holkeri, Ministry of Finance, tel. 02955 30087