e-GOVERNMENT IN FINLAND - ePractice.eu

6.3 Case study 3: The citizen portal
440. Finland’s national Web portal, the citizen portal, is a recent, high-profile effort to simplify and
facilitate citizen access to government services. While it provides information and search facilitation
services, it is primarily an e-enabler that can improve access and take-up, and eventually the
interoperability, of all e-government services and e-engagement efforts.
6.3.1 Background
441. In the summer of 1996, the Ministry of Finance initiated a project aimed at bringing online the
Citizen’s Guide, a handbook which provided citizens with basic information pertaining to different life
situations. The Citizen’s Guide was first published in Finnish in 1992 (in Swedish the following year) as a
printed document and presented public administration services of use to citizens. It was later made
available on floppy disc.
442. In creating a portal, the MoF sought to increase citizen access to this information as well as to be
able to update the information more frequently, since updating, printing and distributing the paper version
was a resource-intensive process. The idea was to transfer as much as possible the responsibility for the
accuracy and quality of the information to service providers.
443. The decision to opt for an online version was supported by a Citizen’s Guide user survey carried
out in the summer of 1996. The survey showed that a large majority of orders for the guide was for
professional use rather than for private consultation. In addition, the survey revealed that a large majority
was in favour of having the information available on the Internet. Experience in other countries also
suggested the need to create a channel of continuously updated information for citizens.
444. The Citizen’s Guide was launched on the Internet in 1997. While the electronic publication was
less comprehensive than the printed book, it had the advantages of speed and flexibility. At the outset, the
Swedish version also did not contain complete and accurate information.
445. The Electronic Citizen’s Guide on the Internet included essential information that citizens need at
different stages, and it was organised by themes (emergency, children, families, legal information).
Retrieval of information is free of charge. The guide was available in Finnish and Swedish and also
featured an English section.
446. Statistics on use of the guide were compiled in 1999. The total number of visits to one of the
guide pages varied between 34 500 and 60 000 and reached 4 000 to 5 000 units a day. The guide’s search
engine was used by an average of 15 000 users a month. Links to 120 information suppliers were included
in the guide.
447. The views of guide users were analysed by examining user feedback and by undertaking a
customer survey in February 1999. The survey examined a total of 62 responses collected over the twoweek
survey period. Of these, 29 were first-time users. Comments on the guide’s conception and
comprehensiveness were largely positive, but users expressed a desire for more detailed and up-to-date
information on procedures to follow in various situations and stressed the difficulty of using the search
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