Me and KELA

I find KELA an institution that provides services for all of us. I was a bit surprised after scrolling through their website and realized there are not services for me that KELA provides right now. When I did my bachelor’s degree I got study grant, loan and housing benefit from KELA. But now, when I’m doing the master’s degree while working I’m not covered by the same benefits. It is understandable because I have the same annual earnings that I would have if I wouldn’t study.

If I want to be accurate, I actually have a student health care fee (like all of us who are doing the studies) that is covered by KELA. Because my good occupational healthcare I don’t use the student healthcare in practice. All though I’m paying a yearly fee of it. And talking about healthcare, I have the European healthcare card, this is a card that I’m entitled to have, If something happens to me abroad (in EU), the card grants me a emergency medical care in side EU.

OmaKanta for my own use

When was a last time I logged in to OmaKanta before this assignment? Funny enough, I did it yesterday when I was trying to figure out what lotion the doctor did order to me last autumn for my dry skin. Also the past 2,5 years in pandemic has introduced me to OmaKanta quite well. I’ve done few Covid-tests and few virtual diagnose valuations via OmaKanta.

The logging in is simple and easy, just the same way I do nowadays to most of the services. I log in to the service with my mobile sertication which is linked to my banking account. It is simple and thanks to my pretty new phone I don’t need to type much, just showing my own face to the camera helps me to log in to the service.

The pension

I’m 32 years old, so I have few decades to work till I have reached my retirement age. It is strating to be clear that my generation wont get the same kind of pension that the baby boomers have. The working age is raising because of life expectancy and the hard changes to maintenance relationship.

While I’m 40 or 50 there will be so many people needing the pension that the pension as such is not enough. This means that the government needs to do some big changes in the future. For example Sixten Korkman, one of the well-known economic informants have said:

“The changes concern young people who can only dream of the benefits of older generations. The luckiest generations have already retired. They receive more pension than they have paid in pension contributions.”

So this is why I’m not so interested of looking my pension estimations. Although I logged in and noticed that the estimation says that if I work till 70 years, I will get 500€/month more than if stop working on the lowest pension age 67,5 years old.

Digital shops vs. the physical ones

Most of my purchases are made via online. I buy most of my clothing online, I book my trips and usually my biggest purchases online. I’m used to use COS online store and Zalando for example to do my clothing shopping and most of my hotel bookings I do via Booking.com. These are the online stores I’m used to trust. But when I start using a new store I quite often do a fact check, where I google the online store name and try to find comments on how the online store have worked to other people. If it looks shady I don’t use it.

The information I get from these stores it usually very comprehensive. There are details that helps you do the decision quickly. I have noticed that usually the bigger online stores have better informations and it’s easier to buy products from their sites. The clothing prizes are usually quite the same as in the normal stores. But in online stores they have more often discounts that affects to the total price lowering. When I book the accommodation, I like to use booking because the prizes are cheaper than booking it straight from the hotel. Also in Booking you can get the breakfast usually included to the room rate while booking it from the hotel they add the breakfast on top of the rate.

I have tried to favor the local stores but I have noticed that the service in some stores doesn’t really exist. And if they try to help they don’t have much information to give about the product I’m thinking about buying.

Fiverr.com

In my industry we use local and global freelancers that provides Voiceover services or for example graphic design services. These freelancers can be found in Fiverr.com. The freelancer has created her/his own profile with different references and details. For example when I need to find Canadian voice over talent that has a deep voice and that is between 40-60 years old I just add these info’s to the search bar and the service narrows me down the options they have in their service.

I can listen their references and when I have found the best option. I pay the order via Fiverr and after this I send the specific briefing to the actor by using the service. After a little while I have received the sample or ready made voice over file which we can use in our production.

Usually this service is a bit affordable than using the old ways (sound studios) and you trust that the voice over comes in with the promised schedule. This makes my work easier and faster, and also our customer benefits from a more versatile sound selection.

The Digital Competence

One of the assignment was to see your own digital competence. There as more than 60 interesting question about how you feel your strengths and weaknesses in digital world. I had the worse numbers in automation and configuration (still more than 60%). The rest of the themes were between 79-94% and I must say that the results go pretty well hand in hand how I would have felt even before doing the test. I like to move in different digital environments, but sometimes automation and configuration works makes my head exploising. I have quite short nerves when it comes to technology and if something doesn’t go like I have imagined I might get a bit frustrated. It is interesting because that happens to me mostly just with computers and not in real life.

All in all, this test was interesting to do. It was quite a task to answer to all of the questions but the results concretizes me in digital world and helps me to develop my weaknesses.

SELFEVALUATION

As mentioned I was already very familiar with public sector digi services such as OmaKanta and KELA. These services (like they have developed) have made everyday life easier and simpler. You can easily check your balance, your healthcare history etc. via different services.

In my work life I’m working with few business sensitive customers and we need to protect their data very carefully. This is something that this assignments have helped me to understand even more. I would like to learn more about Digital Health & Wellness. This is something that I find interesting topic in the future and we should pay more attention towards it. That digital citizenship is described through nine themes helped me to handle and view the concept, it was eye opening to understand how broad concept it is.

I commented these blogs:

https://digitalizedworking.wordpress.com/digi-citizen/

https://blogi.savonia.fi/miiakokoistinen/digi-citizen/
https://blogi.savonia.fi/digitaalinenperiferia/digi-citizen/

Reference:
Säynäjärvi, T. (2014) “Nuorille ei riitä runsaita eläkkeitä”, Keskisuomalainen. Available at: https://www.ksml.fi/paikalliset/2617341 (Accessed: October 10, 2022).