This article is written by Janne Viskari, Director General at the Finnish Digital Agency.

If we define extreme change as something that happens more or less overnight with massive ramifications, conditions brought about by the coronavirus would fit the bill pretty accurately.

Many organisations had to create a new operations model from scratch, and an even larger number of employees had to adapt to this.

In my own organisation, the Finnish Digital Agency, senior management has also instructed all employees to stay at home apart from those who perform a limited number of tasks that still need to happen in the office, which consists mainly of customer service.

According to the statistics published by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound) in May 2020, approximately 59% of the working population in Finland transitioned to remote work from home due to Corona. This is the largest number among EU countries, which has certainly been facilitated by Finland’s already comprehensive coverage of information networks and terminal equipment.

Although many technical tools or programmes have been deployed both smoothly and quickly, I would still estimate that the greatest benefit of this change has taken place between our ears.

The most visible change to work has been the transition of many employees to remote work

The changes have been so sudden that it has been impossible to provide comprehensive and complete instructions for everything. People have had to independently figure out how they should go about arranging their work, what changes they should implement to their own work and how the process could be streamlined. I am sure that the ability of all employees to use innovative solutions and their situational resilience will be greater after the crisis than it was prior to it. I believe that it will also be a great resource for the development of the entire organisation in the future.

All in all, of our 830 employees around 700 currently work from home. Remote work was familiar to many of employees prior to this, but we also have hundreds of employees who now tried remote work for the first time. Although the situation was new, the change has been an exceptionally smooth one. According to an employee survey, 84% of respondents felt that remote work had gone either well or very well.

In this article, I will describe the kind of digital everyday lives we have adapted to in Finland during the Corona epidemic. As is the case with nearly all of Europe, the possible greatest and most visible change to work has been the transition of many employees to remote work.

Tools for remote working

Our employees’ most important tools are a secure VPN connection to the office network, through which employees can access the information systems they need for performing their work tasks, and virtual meeting programmes Skype and Teams. With these, we have successfully organised seminars with hundreds of participants, and even workshops for small group work, where results are brought together at the end. The employees’ Slack channel and the informal conversations held there have also been in a key role in improving wellbeing and helping employees cope with more limited social interaction. One of the most popular Slack channels has been the Remote workday animals channel, where employees have introduced their pets to other employees.

One of the biggest facilitators of our agency's work has been the widespread introduction of electronic signatures. We have used electronic signatures for years already to sign off on administrative documents, but due to Covid-19 we expanded electronic signatures to include citizen-facing services. These include decisions on name changes, other register data related to population information and decisions by the guardianship services. Our agency also handles marriage ceremonies, but these have at least not yet been conducted digitally despite during the Corona crisis. However, in the event a couple can’t wait to get married we are also about to pilot a virtual wedding room, which will allow the wedding couple to invite guests who can follow the wedding remotely.

The next obvious question will be: is this change permanent? What kind of digital world will we return to after this exceptional period?

Another big change in addition to remote work was restrictions to on-site visits at government offices. In accordance with the decisions made by the Finnish Government, all public services will also be provided during the emergency conditions, but due to the general restriction of assembly, we had to transition at the speed of light to only reserved appointments at our 36 service points.

At our nine largest service points (out of a total of 36), we were given 16 hours to implement the new restrictions after the decision made by our executive board, and all the remaining service points transitioned to reserved appointments within a period of two days. A complete overhaul to the operating model of on-site visits with so little warning time still seems to be an incredible feat, but I can only say that we can achieve things that seem incredible when we really want to!

What’s next for digital government?

The use of government digital services provided by our agency has grown a great deal during the Corona epidemic. For example, we provide a national electronic power of attorney that makes it possible for a person to pick up prescription medicines on behalf of another from any pharmacy. This has been excellent for helping and simplifying the lives of many people during the pandemic, as they did not have to go queue for medicines while sick and possibly infect others. All in all, there have already been around 35 million electronic authorisation events in our service, and in March alone, 22,000 new electronic power of attorneys were issued just for the use of pharmacy services.

The next obvious question will be: is this change permanent? What kind of digital world will we return to after this exceptional period? Developing digital services can ensure that society is able to function in situations similar to the Corona crisis. And not to forget: everyday life will also be improved by the pivot to digital. This spring, reliable digital services have been particularly important for the smooth functioning of society, and now, we must all ensure that they will also be used in the future once conditions have been normalised. Once this crisis is past us, we will need a smooth-running everyday life, won’t we? — Janne Viskari

(Picture credit: Unsplash)

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