Finland pursues ‘zero touch government services’ amidst digital maturity

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“We welcome Elon Musk to Finland to learn how we really do these things,” says the Digital and Population Data Services Agency's Director, Mikko Mattinen, to GovInsider.  

Mattinen makes this point as he shares about the Finnish government’s mission to leverage digital government to drive fiscal efficiency and reduce public spending by 10 per cent.  

He adds that cutting public sector spending is aligned to the government’s principles for digitalisation, known as D9. Cutting unnecessary red tape is one of the nine principles.

Finland is among the most digitalised countries in Europe. According to eurostat, the country has topped the rankings for some key measurements of a digitalised society.  

More than 80 per cent of people in Finland have basic or above basic digital skills – much higher than the EU’s average at 56 per cent.  

The country also has one of the highest shares of residents using internet banking, businesses using artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing, as well as enterprises that are providing ICT training to their staff. 

“We’re seeing that digitalisation is saturating as such,” says Mattinen, highlighting that the "building blocks" of government technology are already in place. 

These include cloud adoption and a centralised population registry, which facilitates data sharing between agencies.

With the foundations in place, the agency is now reviewing its suite of digital services, with the goal of implementing "zero touch" services that require minimal user interaction.

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Best service is no service 

Mattinen defines “zero touch" as the ability of the government to proactively identify and automate the delivery of public services, thereby reducing or removing the need for citizens to interact with the government’s processes to get something done.  

He challenges public agencies to ask themselves the question: Should citizens have to request for these services, or can they be delivered proactively? 

Currently, the agency is working with life event-based services to incorporate “zero touch" services in two aspects. 

One aspect, Mattinen shares, is by simply providing a website guide to inform citizens of the services needed at different life stages.  

For example, Suomi.fi makes available these information and services for citizens.

Suomi.fi is the government’s service catalogue that helps and guides citizens and businesses to handle everyday matters with public authorities. 

GovInsider previously interviewed Joonas Heiter, Director-General of Estonia’s Information System Authority (RIA), who mentioned that RIA is also developing digital government services around life events.  

The other more innovative aspect is enabling end users to receive the service with minimal to no touch with the government’s platforms and processes. This is enabled by cross-agency data sharing, he adds.  

An example of this is through tax declaration. 

“Half of the Finnish people don’t touch their tax declaration at all, while 25 per cent of the rest of them may amend their tax declaration online, and the remaining still doing it manually due to complex situations with properties and shares,” he says.  

“This is a service you need without doing any administrative stuff,” he highlights. 

This is similar to the ‘No Filing Service’ scheme by Singapore’s Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore (IRAS). Taxpayers under the scheme are not required to file a tax return, unless they wish to adjust their income details. 

"Zero touch" services in Finland are also extended to renewing passports, applying identity cards, and registering for a business online – and such services are underpinned by strong authentication and verification services, Mattinen emphasises. 

For example, users do not have to provide a new picture every time they use the abovementioned services when they have provided their picture within the last five years.  

Cloud adoption, population registry, and high public trust as enablers 

Combining cloud-based services with the national registry means that we can quite easily start building data sharing services between agencies and with the private sector, says Mattinen. 

He says that 73 per cent of public agencies are already on the cloud, except for sensitive sectors like the police and armed forces. 

Finnish news agency STT previously reported how Finland’s Population Information System has been a key digital infrastructure that streamlines data sharing and service delivery centered around the citizen. 

Another enabler is also a high public trust in public services. OECD’s 2024 report found that the satisfaction of people in Finland with day-to-day interactions with public institutions is above the OECD average. 

Finland also became the first Nordic country to introduce a Transparency Register, which aims to improve the transparency of decision-making, tackle lobby influencing and strengthen citizens’ trust in government. 

Mattinen shares that the Nordic Digigov Lab - a collaboration project between the Nordic and Baltic countries - is currently piloting a proof-of-concept (POC) called AI Trust that allows agencies and users to audit AI-based services. 

Users are able to understand how decisions are made based on the rules and algorithms behind the AI models.  

While current Finnish legislation does not allow decision-making with machine learning systems, the agency is tapping on this POC to plan ahead in the future when AI systems will be used to make decisions alongside public officials. 

Before concluding our conversation, he shares that the agency is also looking at consolidating government services in a mobile application - with Estonia having recently launched a superapp that brings nearly 50 government services together, as well as Sweden considering a similar route.

Suomi.fi is the main government access point in Finland, and is currently only offered as a web service.