We are living in a digital world in where digital services makes not only our work but also taking care of our personal affairs such as taxation, basic social security and online shopping easier. In this section you get to know to Kela, Omakanta and pension company Ilmarinen. I also visit different online digital shops, evaluate their reliability and do the Digital Competence Test. Let’s see how the results look!
Kela, Omakanta, Ilmarinen
Kela is the Social Insurance Institution of Finland which aims to secure basic economic security in different life situations where a person has lower income. You get help for example in the following situations: old age, incapacity for work, illness, unemployment, childbirth, death of the family breadwinner, rehabilitation or studies. (Kansaneläkelaitos publication date unknown). I’m familiar with Kela services and most recent I applied for pregnancy allowance, parental allowance and child allowance. Kela has helped me also during my studies in the form of study grant, housing allowance and affordable healthcare. As a higher education student I have right to use the services of the Finnish Student Health Service (FSHS). I have also had several years a European health insurance card which ensures me necessary medical treatment when travelling in another EU or EEA country, in Switzerland, Great Britain on in Northern Ireland. I’m positively surprised how easy it was to make applications online and the instructions what I should do and when, were clear. Doing the applications online saves me time and is a lot easier nowadays versus if I needed to find Kela office which is open!
In OmaKanta (MyKanta) I can check easily my own and under 10-year-old-child health data and prescriptions (also renewal of prescriptions). There it is also possible to save your living will and organ donation testament. In my opinion I get sometimes faster and broader information about my test result compared to when you needed to make a call or book a new time to nurse or doctor. It is easy to use the service because you can authenticate your log-in with my banking codes Other ways to log-in are a mobile certificate, electronic identity card or a social and health care professional card or organisation card issued by the Digital and Population Data Services Agency (Kanta Services publication date unknown).
My pension company currently is Ilmarinen. I have logged in to their service also before to check my current retirement age and that information about my work history is correct. My lowest retirement age is 67 years and 9 months and accumulation of pension stops when I am 70. If I work until the highest age, my pension will with current information be approximately 16% higher than it would be at the lowest possible retirement age. I believe that the retirement system in Finland will change before I retire, so I have already started to save also for my retirement days.
Online shopping and OP eServices
The possibilities to digital shopping worldwide are enormous and only growing when companies are trying to reach more customers and keep up with the competition. I haven’t used digital shops like eBay or Amazon, but of course I have heard about those, whereas Booking.com and Trivago are more familiar to me. I use often Booking.com when planning a holiday because from there I can see at once many options for accommodation. I don’t necessarily book accommodation straight from there because I like to compare prices between Booking.com and hosts own website. Sometimes the prices are the same, but sometimes not. For example you can have co-op member benefits in Sokos hotels if you book accommodation from their own websites. I have never had problems with Booking.com and I keep the service quite straightforward and reliable.
I checked as an example the prices from eBay, Amazon and XXL if I would like to buy Polar Ignite 2 fitness watch. From eBay, I would get seller refurbished watch approximately 219€ (price includes shipping and import charges from UK). From Amazon the price of a new watch is would be approx. 280€ and from XXL 249€ (no shipping costs). In this case, from the price and reliability point of view I would buy it from Finland. Usually I prefer domestic online shops because I keep them more reliable than foreign service providers. Of course this depends also on what I am looking for to buy. Usually before making purchase decision I check comments about service provider from Google, payment method possibilities and shipping terms at least.
From my own field of expertise, I chose to look more closely OP eServices. Online banking service and banking codes are quite essential to everyone nowadays. Life is much easier if you have banking codes because then you can effortlessly take care of financial transactions and log-in for example Kela and OmaKanta. I chose OP eServices also because I use my banking codes almost every day at work and in personal life. You can log-in to online banking service from op.fi or from op-mobile application. OP-mobile app especially is constantly under development because customers are expecting more features from it. I would say also that it is much easier to for example change spending and withdrawal limits of your bank card from mobile app than from op.fi, because then I don’t necessarily have to find computer to do so and the view for the service is better compared to log in op.fi from the browser of my phone.
Digitalization and digital gap
There are people who don’t have necessary equipment or skills to use virtual services. For example elderly people may need more help using virtual services and they might not even have any interest to learn new skills anymore. This sets them unequal situation in some services. Recently I helped my father to fill in tax return in vero.fi websites. If he wanted to fill in tax return in paper form, he would have needed to first print the right form from vero.fi or order those and return envelope by phone (service subject to a charge). He could have returned the papers by post or straight to closest tax office which is 50km away from where he lives. He should have also taken into account the time which postal delivery takes because taxation office can charge late fee. This shows that if you can’t use virtual services, you have to pay more for the service and I would say, you have more stress during the process.
What if you don’t have or you can’t get banking codes to use virtual services? What if you don’t have anyone to help using virtual services? I would say that then you are in weaker position compared to others. Digital inequality can be in sight also in some online shops (online collections of products) and education. Some shops have only online collection to offer which you can’t buy from stores or they can have different discount campaigns online. In some cases you need digital equipment and money to study because study materials are only online for example.
Digital Competence test
The digital competence test gives overview of your digital competences and gives concrete tools to how improve those. According the test, my competencies are at intermediate level and I agree to that. I’m good at searching information, using different digital platforms, collaborate through different technologies and solve straightforward problems. I should learn more about automation, production and sharing and storage. For example I have no clue about programming languages, software development or hardware. I manage well without problems at work, but especially in the future improving my competencies could be very useful.
Self-evaluation
We can run multiple errands completely in virtual services these days and it makes our everyday life easier in my opinion. I notice that I almost rather do business and shopping online than in stores. It depends on service and its complexity which I need. Sometimes it is better to get verification to your thoughts from some expert and sometimes online guide’s are enough. And as I stated before, it would not go to waste learning more digital competencies. Digital change is both positive and negative because of digital gap.
References
Kansaneläkelaitos, publication date unknown. Social seucurity in Finland. Online publication. https://www.kela.fi/social-security-in-finland. Referred 10.3.2023.
Kanta Services, publication date unknown. MyKanta – General. Authentication. Online publication. https://www.kanta.fi/en/faq-my-kanta-pages-general#k-1-1-how-do-i-log-in-to-mykanta-. Referred 10.3.2023.
I left comments on Sebastian’s, Sanna’s and Johanna’s blogs
https://sebastianwestersund.wordpress.com/digi-citizen/
You can see the comments also from here before the moderation is done:
Hi Sebastian,
Thank you for your blog! I agree with you that European Health Insurance card is good to have although you travel rarely because you never know when you need it. It is good to have at least some sort of insurance if something happens during travels. My retirement age is even higher than yours but in my occupation it does not feel impossible idea to work still then. I think that the occupation should be considered also in planning suitable retirement age or at least work tasks should be easier closer to retirement age in demanding occupations such yours.
You had a good point that digital gap can also influence to remote work, telemedicine and job opportunities. I have helped my colleagues with technical issues at work more than once. Digitalization effects to several sectors of our daily life and we need to use virtual services often. I agree also that Digital competence test was useful assessing our current competencies and in giving concrete hints how to improve our competencies.
Hi Sanna,
It was nice to read your blog about digitalization from the perspective of agriculture! I have had European Health Insurance card for several years, but I feel that it is not yet that common to have. I don’t even remember from where I heard about it. Kela could have more information about it to everyone. I feel too that both Kela and OmaKanta services are easy to use and very useful. I don’t get either pension from Keva, but it was easy to log-in also other service with banking codes. I believe too that our pension predictions will change in the future before we can even dream about retirement.
I found out that the price of same product can vary a lot depending on which online shop you are buying it. For example in Amazon the price was higher than in XXL here in Finland because of the shipping costs. I concluded that it depends on what you are buying if its more affordable buy abroad or from Finland. I have never before heard about ProAgria, but I can image that it is very important service in your field. I agree that digital externality threatens young people and elderly the most and that it is important to teach digital skills in schools. I think that our kids will learn about these things much more in theory than we have learned.
Hi Johanna!
Thank you for your thoughts about Digi Citizen! I noticed too that the difference in pension between full retirement age and lowest possible retirement age might not be so big. However, I would benefit working longer and let’s see how retirement ages change before we can retire. I wish I had time to travel also. Prague is a beautiful city and I hope you enjoy travelling there too! When booking a holiday, especially to abroad, you need to check travel details carefully as you said. The prices and services can vary a lot.
I use Teams also at work daily and I feel that I could learn even more about its features. It would good to read instruction manual sometimes to get best benefits of the programme into use. You had a good highlight that virtual services can be a challenge for tourists. I agree on that because when travelling you may not have any interest to download different apps to your phone for one week and you might not even know which app could give you the best benefits.
Hello Jenny,
Thank you for your interesting blog text.
The price comparison of the watch you made from online stores was interesting and the price differences surprisingly large. Personally, I also prefer domestic online stores if it’s possible and reasonable. I believe that especially in problem situations, it’s easier to solve problems with a domestic online store.
I also use OP online banking myself, mostly OP mobile. In my opinion, OP mobile has evolved tremendously over the past few years for the better. Paying in online stores and authenticating with online banking credentials is also much easier today with the help of mobile alone than a couple of years ago.
Virtual services are very common and easy to use today, but I also worry people who don’t have the opportunity or skills to use them. There are only few alternatives to virtual services anymore and they are difficult to use and often also quite expensive.
It was interesting to read your price comparison. In my own blog, I also considered how, for example, elderly people can miss out on some service because they don’t own smart devices. The layout of your blog is pleasant, I’m just practicing blogging myself and the layout of my blog is quite simple.
https://blogi.savonia.fi/jane/
Hello Jenny!
I agree that it’s essential for the service providers to continuously update and improve their platforms to meet the customers’ needs. The OP-mobile app seems to be a convenient way to manage financial transactions and other important tasks without the need for a computer. My bank account is in S-Pankki and I use S-mobiili every day in my personal life as well.
You gave a good example about father, who would have to have returned the tax papers by post or straight to the tax office which is 50 km without your help. I also think that the tax office has developed in six years. Six years ago, my summer job salary was marked double on the tax return. I had to go to the nearest tax office with my pay slips and wait in line. Last year, it was enough that a tax official called me and asked about a similar issue.
Hi Jenny!
Thanks for the blog post! I agree wiht you on digital shops, have heard but not used as I would prefer local vendors and maybe I just have not searched/needed stuff that I could order from Amazon. I liked what you had written also about the digitalization and digital gap.
Hi Jenni,
thanks for your blog. It was interesting to read how you had compared different travel websites and online stores when comparing the prices. I have also noticed the same thing, that for example, when booking a hotel, you can save money by booking the accommodation directly from the hotel’s own website. Sometimes booking.com offers the cheapest option.
I also agree that the elderly, for example, suffer from the rapid and wide digitization of society. Also, people who need special support, for example the visually impaired, are easily excluded from services due to digitalization. This creates digital gap and inequality.
Hi,
Thanks for a nice blog text. It was interesting to read how difficult it would be to try to get i.e. tax return without using online services. We definitely need more support for people who are not so familiar/capable with online services.
I´m also using the OP mobile app. There is a huge developmet during couple of years. So many new features and easier access without code-list.
Hi Jenny,
Thanks for your blog. It was nice to read about the use of OP eServices. I use it myself especially when enrolling for a new course and any other bank related transaction. It saves me all the troubles of putting in unnecessary information before enrolling, I basically just need to scan my QR code on my mobile phone through the online app.
You also made mention of the gap that exist in the digital world especially amongst the elderly. I agree with you on this completely because I work in the healthcare field (mainly with the elderly and children with disability) and as a rehabilitation counselor, I would say that the elderly are not really exposed to the use of visual services. It may take time for them to learn to use it, but I think gradual introduction of the use of digital services can be a steppingstone to getting them acquainted with it. It is important to include them in the use of visual services as they are part of the society.
With respect to the online shopping sites, I liked how you compared the prices. I have used eBay in the past and still use amazon. The challenge is, eBay is not in Finland and one has to pay heavy for shipping fees because its coming from the UK like you said. Hopefully they find a way to make it accessible to Finns.
Thanks
Here’s my blog
https://joyceasikele.wordpress.com/