e-GOVERNMENT IN FINLAND - ePractice.eu

409. In 1998, the government agreed on a resolution 60 which paved the way for the FINEID project by
appointing the Population Register Centre as the official certification organisation, promoting the
preparation of legislative amendments and requiring ministries and agencies to provide electronic services.
The decision set 1999 as a starting year for the implementation of the card and gave the MoF and MoI
responsibility for reporting annually on progress to the government.
410. A legislative framework for the introduction of electronic identification was provided by the
Identification Card Act (1999) and the Electronic Communication in the Administration Act (1999), as well
as amendments to the Population Information Act (1999). This legislation set out the legal guidelines for
personal identification and for the production of electronic signatures and services.
6.2.2 Demand for electronic identification
411. Interviews with Finnish officials offered many reasons as to why the FINEID card was originally
mandated. Some say that it arose from the perception that agencies would not develop interactive Stage 3
services unless there were secure channels for such services. Others noted the concern that multiple
standards would result in lost time and opportunities as providers of electronic authentication battled it out
for a dominant market position. Finally, some felt that the decision to issue an electronic identification card
was essentially a political decision based on the desire to have a high-profile output, rather than on an
analysis of service needs, and that, at the time it was mandated, politicians did not have a good
understanding of what the FINEID card entailed. One interviewee noted that in 1995-96, when the decision
to launch a smart card was made, the government was making information society policy decisions in
isolation and later admitted it may have been naïve in taking this approach.
412. Prior to the unveiling of the FINEID card, the private sector tended to choose weaker solutions
for online service authentication such as a username and password that offered less security than a smart
card, but which were easier to use and did not requiring setting up a separate infrastructure. The first such
services came from the banking sector. Banks started to offer authentication as a separate service in 2001.
Other smart cards had previously been issued in Finland [e.g. city cards, multiple service card (Posti),
public transportation system travel cards (Tampere) and electronic purses (Avant)], but none of these
offered the possibility of personal identification. The first electronic ID cards to be issued focused on more
targeted populations. For example, three of the largest Finnish municipalities offer their residents
electronic identification cards. In addition, the Student Union of the University of Helsinki has issued a
smart card that can be used both as an electronic purse and as an identity card.
413. The FINEID card has the ambition of being a “universal” identification and authentication
provider. It has the advantage of building on an existing citizen ID card. Like the other Nordic countries,
Finland has a long-standing tradition of citizen identity registers extending back to the seventeenth century
in which the government maintained administrative tax records and parishes kept birth and death records.
Nor are electronic identities a novelty, since the citizen registers were digitised in the 1960s and have been
used to provide a number of proactive services to citizens. As a result, the government saw introducing the
electronic ID card simply as an extension of its role to create an information society infrastructure and to
further improve and support electronic services.
60 All provisions and recommendations are included in the Council of Ministers resolution of 5 February 1998 on
Electronic Transactions, Development of Services and Reduction of Data Gathering.
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