Finland to strengthen its already strong ICT capabilities

The ICT sector has been selected as one of Finland’s five technology focus areas for the future, according to a recent report produced by the country’s National Technology Agency, Tekes. The aim is to ensure that Finland continues to be a leader in the extensive use of ICT.

The Tekes report proposes focusing on ICT services, user-friendliness, knowledge and content management, and making greater use of ICT in real-life applications benefiting people in their day-to-day life and building solutions designed to make their work easier and effective.

Finland has already built up a strong base in ICT, and was recently ranked first in an assessment by the World Economic Forum (WEF) of the state of information technology, particularly in everyday applications, in 82 economies around the world. To meet its strategic goal of remaining a leader in producing and using ICT technology into the future, Finland will need to develop innovative business processes and new forms of work and welfare services for the knowledge and learning economy, according to Tekes.

We can expect to see ICT become an increasingly integrated part of everyday life in the future, particularly in areas such as administration, education, research, industry, health care, and leisure. The Finnish banking sector is already ranked as the leading user of ICT.

ICT as an enabler

Although Finland has already achieved a lot in integrating ICT into everyday life, making it a true enabler across the entire spectrum of society is still a major challenge. Many areas of conventional industry could benefit from using ICT to increase productivity and update their production base. The ICT sector itself is well developed in Finland, but ICT still has inroads to make in other sectors.

The Tekes report identifies a number of technology focus areas for the Finnish ICT sector, including mobility, broadband communications, software-intensive products and systems, knowledge and content management, and developing test environments for new applications and services.