Social insurance insitution (KELA):
When I was younger and I was still studying Vocational Qualification in Business and Administration, I was approved social insurance for students. It covered meals in the campus and long distance travel so I got bus card. After moving to my own apartment I applied for house rent money from KELA since I had little to no income. I was also given rehabilitation money since I was half a year unemployed, after army service. Then after some years, next time I applied money from Kela was when I got approved to study degree in Bachelor of social services. I was given student allowance and loan plus support money to pay house rent.

Omakanta:
I used OP-Mobile application to access Omakanta website. It is application to access your bank account with your phone. I haven’t used Omakanta much before, until now. Before I would check it maybe once in every 4 or 5 years. I’ve been now more concious about my own well being and health and I check it at least few times in a year now, due to appointed visits to the doctor to see the diagnoses and other health related information.

KEVA:
According to the KEVA, I could retire earliest at 67 years, 7 months old.
Latest would be at 70 years old. At this rate, especially if they keep raising the limit, it’s going to take a while. 🙂

Digital Shops:
I’ve used a lot of digital shops to purchase products from other countries. Amazon, Redbubble, Displate, Ebay to name the few. The best shopping experience that I had was through Amazon. I ordered vinyl music disc from Japan. Shipping cost was only 14 €. Product arrived to Finland in 2 days. It was also stuck in Tampere – Pirkkala for 2 days. It’s funny to think that one package can arrive in same time frame from other part of the world, but gets stuck between two cities for same amount time within your own country.

What comes to question that are they reliable? Yes, they have to be. Otherwise they wouldn’t work. Of course, there’s an issue about data protection. I think we shouldn’t be giving so much information about ourselves to these big companies so easily.

Application for my own field:
https://discord.com/ is an chat application. It was firstly introduced to people that played video games, but platform has expanded their view since releasing it. There are now study groups, digital enviroments for different hobbies, watching sports, discussion groups for different subjects, eg. art. There’s also platforms built for cities or regions have their own chat channels as well. There’s also easy way to make your own personal group, either private or public. We’ve used it as one form of youth work. We’ve built digital youthcenter and it has over 300 members currently.

Digitalization and digital gap
We can already see large disparity between people who can use digital applications and devices, versus those who have no access to those items. I can give you example from view of small rural village. There’s only one local bank, that is open only 3 days in a week. People with access to internet and digital device can access their bank account and do essentially what they want at any given time. People without no access to those devices, have to plan their visit to the village in time when bank is open and arrive early enough so they can do their business there. I’ve witnessed people standing in line for 2 hours to just pay their bills. I can do all that with my computer or phone in 5 minutes.

Three blogs that I commented on:
Mirja’s blog
https://blogi.savonia.fi/digitaalinenperiferia/digi-citizen/

Ninan Blogi
https://blogi.savonia.fi/ninanblogi/digi-sitizen-2/

Jari Ojala
https://blogi.savonia.fi/jariojala/digi-citizen/

Digital competence test:
You can see result of my digital competence test in below.

https://digital-competence.eu/dc/report/?uri=80112b55ada1b9cfea48bfa99c44f3e6

Self reflection:
As of writing this page of blog post I started to think that how many things I take for granted. One example would be the fact that I have access to all these digital tools and internet. If I need something, I can order it from the internet. If I need to pay my bills, I can access internet to get instant access to my bank account. If there’s something that needs fixing maybe I can find solution online. If not, I can lookup contact information for professional who knows what to do.

I have access to all these news site and social media to read up on topics that interest me, or find events that are happening around my country, or other countries. I could start selling products in an online webstore to start earning little extra income. I have access to all these television shows, broadcasts, radio, talk shows, movies. I could look up information about interesting holiday destinations and book flight ticket. Don’t feel like going to the store? no worries, I can just use app to order food or food ingridients next to my doorstep. How convinient!

I think I and many others have learned to live a really good comfortable life, which is not unfortunately accessible for everyone. I think due to recent world events, many people had to take a step back and take a good self reflection about what is truly important in their lives. It’s also time to realize what we can do to help those who cannot help themselves.