{"id":17,"date":"2025-01-15T20:08:13","date_gmt":"2025-01-15T18:08:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogi.savonia.fi\/kallelyytinen\/?page_id=17"},"modified":"2026-10-05T18:50:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-05T15:50:08","slug":"digi-citizen","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blogi.savonia.fi\/kallelyytinen\/digi-citizen\/","title":{"rendered":"DIGI CITIZEN"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I got my European health insurance card (EHIC) <\/strong>back at 2004 when I moved to Norway to live and work there. I have not had use for EHIC, but I still have it and it renews automatically. It’s nice to have when abroad, even if one has travel insurance in place. What comes to KELA services I have the Kela card as do my spouse. I think I last used Kela card, therefore services in questions, two or three years ago when I had medical care for an injury. Pretty much same for my spouse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

OmaKanta<\/strong> I have not used much either, I guess I have been lucky for not suffering any serious illness or disease. I had a go and accessed using a strong electronic authentication method.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In terms of retirement,<\/strong> I am an entrepreneur, so a lot of the responsibility for my retirement lies with me. I think it is wise to have your own personal investments and savings and not to blindly rely on the state pension for your old age. And it is unclear if one lives to enjoy the pension, at least according to the yellow papers there is always a disease of five to ten clickable reasons one might die prematurely. I receive an annual statement from the Ilmarinen I pay my pension (YEL) fees. I also use Ilmarinen’s online service, where I can follow the development of my pension, to check and change (if necessary) my annual payments. I’m not sure if I will ever really stop working. If I do, five years here or there won’t matter in terms of income. When you think about it, we don’t need much to survive in this world, we’re just used to (too) easy living with all the comforts and material around us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About online shopping <\/strong>I have a personal experience example. In the line of work I have been the B2B commerce is not yet online, in a sense that one could just buy – say – a new power plant or a house with a click in an online store. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My first online shopping experience is from the end of 1990’s. Together with my friends we ordered mountain climbing equipment from a store named Globetrotter, in Germany. Back at the days the shop was V.23-based online service (BTX) they began at 1993. I am still a customer and do order outdoors and climbing gear from that store. Specialized and\/or specificly sized gear that isn\u2019t a mainstream stuff can be really hard to buy and it is sometimes even impossible to compare prices if there are only handful of manufacturers in the world and almost all of them are in US. However in 25 years a lot has happened. Nowadays it is possible to walk into a shop even in Kuopio and buy some basic climbing gear. Early in the millenium there was one proper store in the Helsinki where I lived at the time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Generally speaking I do like (German) online stores that offer swift, reliable and punctual service. When I was working in the ITC business one of my tasks was to UX R&D and designing software user interfaces. I have to say, that was mighty interesting and one the most challenging things I’ve faced in my work but also very rewrding. In the online shopping I value thoughtful user experience design that is really a form of an art which requires a special blend of creativity and logic.
What I like in the Globetrotter online store: the UI is simple, it follows deductive pattern and within three mouse clicks I see a product from the list category, with a starting price and mouseover hover displays additional information. The user experience follows western reading pattern from left to right, top to bottom and it uses lists and categories we\u2019ve been accustomed to. Shortly I know where I am in the online store, I easily can access and see the most relevant information (price, availability, shipping time) and what is in the stock.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For me I value the ease of shopping in a familiar online shop, because I simply do not have time nor patience to spend hours browsing through the internet for the best offer and suffer the idiotic bots and so-called best offers that come by with spam emails. It’s as simple as transaction costs principle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For security reasons I use PayPal and 2FA in the account and I only buy from established online shops with a history. Trustpilot and other rating services are useful. If in doubt I do check company information and the VAT info and if not available I have not had such a dire need for any goods that I would bet on my money to be lost. I do check also that certification and SSL\/TSL is in place properly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From online trade and commerce field of expertise<\/strong> I chose one interesting online service I use from time to time. In the US there is one particular delivery service I like to mention. It is called myus.com. After creating an account, that is free and quickly done, you get a physical US and UK addresses and a line number. The service is in essence a proxy logistics that will receive a shipment on your behalf and forward it into the final destination like your home address. You pay only for the shipments according to the delivery courier service you select and of course the weight and size of the parcel(s). In essence, when package arrives to the myus facility I get a notification about the shipment. I can choose an automatic shipment or each time I order something I do specify the forwarding courier. I get images about the packaging process and a tracking code, so I am constantly aware what is going on with my shipment. Many online store and generally speaking service providers especially in Finland could learn a bit about how things could be really managed in a user\/customer friendly way. This service is mighty convenient for obtaining special items otherwise unavailable in Europe or because of the Brexit from the UK.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Concerning digital inequality<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the pandemic we became forced to rely on the internet for work, school and daily means of communication. There are many factors why some people or even communities might face severe disadvantage. Fear of the technology or mistrust, maybe because of misconceptions and disbelief or maybe due to technological limitations, be it either use issue or connectivity at remote areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Digital health care and social welfare services have been spreading rapidly and partly replacing face-to-face services. I am worried especially thinking of elderly people who might not have a smart phone at all neither a computer at their use. If society designs and implements, say, a digital healthcare systems based on assumptions every one that needs or may need the healthcare service is able to use the digital service I think we as a society put the tech before a human. People may have disabilities and they need human assistance to come by. Digital inequality has been studied (sagepub and other scientific databases provide lots of information) and findings recommend improving Internet access and digital skills and implementing means to address negative attitudes, especially among vulnerable groups. This sounds logical and reasonable, but I wonder what should be the actions and implementation to make things work in the distant areas, when public health care in Finland is facing financing and labour issues?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Globally the digital inequality between rich and poor countries is growing larger<\/a>. The costs of internet connectivity is way higher in developing countries. We in Finland have well established internet infrastructure because of 3G, 4G and 5G mobile networks. Even in other nordic countries people are dependent more of a DSL, fiber optic or landline broadband connections. Finnish internet ecosystem offer convenient and affordable way to connect. Our geopolitical location makes Finland interesting data exchange point for the internatioal data transfer. We had 18 internet service exchange points and 11 subocean cables in 2022.The network operators manage 370 autonomous system numbers, that are used to route and transfer data from IP-addresses. Another critical part of the internet backbone infrastructure is content delivery network which is used to store large data packages, like video content, closer to end use location to prevent network capacity overload. In Finland internet connection and backbone is managed by many operators like Elisa, Telia, Finnet, Cinia, Ficix and so on. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reason why I went to rather long description is that in poor countries the internet penetration rate can be really low compared to how things are in Finland. For eample, in Somalia just 2% of a population of over 17 million people had access to the internet in 2023. In addition to physical and digital infrastructure that provide the connectivity people must have a device to access internet and an operator contract. It is huge challenge to bridge the gap but in order for contries to develop it is critical to have connection for learning, education, communication and diplomacy purposes, just to name few.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For further readings I recommend OECD’s Digital Governement page<\/a> as well as Paul Taylor’s blog Is Digital Bureaucracy Making Us Less Productive?<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

My Digital Competence Test results may be found here.<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A short reflection.<\/strong> To some extents I have faced the issues presented in this assignment in my life. I have background in ITC and I have been trying to keep up to date, although tech is advancing so rapidly even online webcommerce is such a large topic that it is impossible to keep track of all the new achievements and development. New to me was the Open Badges platform \/ community \/ economy. Mighty interesting! I am sure to spend some sleepless nights thinking about possibilities and opportunities how to take advantage of the concept. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blog’s I commented:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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DIGI CITIZEN<\/a><\/blockquote>