DIGI CITIZEN
Kela
The National Pension Institution Kela supports Finnish citizens who are financially vulnerable and at a turning point in their lives. Kela reimburses part of people’s medical care and medicine costs. Personally, the services that I am most familiar with from Kela are services aimed at families, disability and rehabilitation. The latest Kela service I have come across is the disability card, which entitles people with limited functional capacity to receive more accessible customer service. I have had the European Health Insurance Card in use for years.
Omakanta
The Omakanta service is a good way to check my own health information. I go to read the notes made about me and see any laboratory results and renew medication prescriptions. Through the service, I can also read information related to the health and rehabilitation of my children under the age of ten.
Keva
I checked my own pension information from KEVA. My earliest retirement age is 67 years 7 months and my target retirement age is 69 years 10 months. There is still time until retirement, so I have time to accumulate my pension in working life and by doing personal financial planning with retirement in mind.
Työmarkkinatori – Job market, Finland Job market is a service where employees and workplaces meet. In the service, job seekers look for work or plan their careers and employers look for people to work. I have used the service both when I was working and in my personal life when looking for work. The service is a website maintained by the Ministry of Employment and the Economy.
In my experience, you log in to the website when you start your job search, update your employment plan and end your job search. You can also visit the website to read the employment policy statement, after which you will find out whether you are entitled to unemployment benefit from Kela or your own unemployment fund.
Booking, trivago and Amazon compare prices for services and products from international markets.
- Booking is a service that compares prices for flights, accommodation and activities using the websites of service providers. So, anyone planning a trip can easily use the booking service to plan a unique leisure or holiday trip with flights, accommodation, activities and transfers.
- Trivago advertises to compare hotel prices for you from over 100 different websites easily and efficiently. Using the service promises savings. I believe that the savings will be in the price of the hotel and the time that the user of the service uses to compare services.
- Amazon is an online store operating in many countries, where you can buy a wide range of products from clothing to interior design products. The online store has online stores in different countries. Each country has its own website, from which products can be ordered from around the world. Finland does not have its own website. However, you can easily compare prices and delivery costs for the product you want between websites and order from where the product is available the cheapest and fastest. Each country has different consumer legislation and it is very important to familiarize yourself with information on data protection, shipping costs and returns.
I have used comppare services like Trivago or Booking. Sometimes prices are not always “best” prices. I usually also check prices on hotel and airline websites.
Digitalization and digital gap
Services, marketing and communication have almost without exception moved to various digital platforms. Digitalization has made everyday life more flexible. Digital services save time and money. Marketing events are efficient and, one could say, more environmentally friendly, as less paper is used. If you do not use digital services, obtaining information and, for example, comparing services is more laborious. From the perspective of acting as a citizen, being outside of digital services puts a citizen in an unequal position and could be said to be at risk of being marginalized. Benefits may not be applied for, messages from authorities may not be received, and news from loved ones may not be heard, because keeping in touch largely takes place via social media. You may no longer notice when you tell people separately. Information on Instagram often reaches most of your loved ones.
Digitality is a strong part of society’s services and communication. Digital skills are a civic skill that I believe is also within the reach of older citizens. Digitality has brought a lot of good things with it, for example, the ease of doing business. It has also brought a lot of bad things. Security, data protection and brain health have been the talk of both consumers and researchers in recent years. People are not obliged to use digital services themselves, but a lot of information is collected about people in various registers and databases. People have the right to know and check what information has been collected about them and what the information is used for.
Reflection
I learned about this assignment, My digital competes are categories information and communication. I took The digital competence test to test my digital competence. The test helped me see which skills are my strengths and which categories need more practice. The result did not surprise me. I am a strong expert in areas related to digital information and communication. I want to learn to make better use of digital tools and automation to help me produce plans, documents, and statistics more efficiently. So I used Copilot to finalize this publication. Maybe using automation is not incompetence. Everyone can not be an expert in everything.
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