Social Insurance Institution of Finland (KELA):

I have two children, so KELA pays me child benefits. When the children were small, I applied for maternity allowance from Kela. We also received a maternity package from Kela, where was clothes and supplies for the baby. I have also applied for student financial aid from Kela when i was a student. Kela must also be paid a student health care fee even if the services are never used. In other words, I have used Kela’s services throughout my life.

OmaKanta:

I know OmaKanta sites well. It stores my health data from private and public care institutions. I have also viewed my child’s information through my OmaKanta Pages. To OmaKanta services can log in with your own online banking credentials.

VARMA:

I found my pension information on Varma’s website. My lowest retirement age is 67 years and the highest is 70 years. The monetary difference between them was 277 eur per month.

Digital shopping from online stores:

I went to visit Amazon’s website. I looked there for art supplies. In front came posca markers. I compared the price on amazon with the price of a Suomalainen Kirjakauppa. The price difference between the products was 10 euros. On Amazon, markers were 10 euros cheaper. Online shopping and price comparisons have become much more common. Personally, I like to compare prices before buying anything. However, when shopping online, you should also remember the price of postage and the choice of payment. The installment option is fine sometimes, as long as you don’t accumulate too many of them. I’ve never ordered anything from Amazon myself. I find the site a bit confusing, but of course it’s in English. I’m pretty specific about what I’m ordering from, so I don’t think I’d order anything from there.

Health service application:

I choosed Terveystalo application. The app is easy to use and reliable. Reliability comes from the fact that health data is transferred to the application in real time. Data security is taken care of by requiring the customer to identify themselves again at certain intervals and otherwise requiring a personal login code. With the app, you can have a remote appointment with a doctor or chat with a doctor or nurse. I’ve used the app several times and I’ve really liked it. The application also provides information to the customer about the treatment of his or her illness. For example, more information about cardiac arrhythmias.

Digitalization and digital divide:

The elderly, in particular, will certainly remain in the digital divide, as services are no longer available in person, for example at a bank. Elderly people need to learn quite a lot of digital skills in order to manage on their own. It is too much for some, and not everyone necessarily has such abilities to learn. The scenario may be that, for example, bills are not paid and an elderly person is forced into enforcement. Another challenge could be that an elderly person does not get help as quickly as they could if they do not know how to use the services. The mere fact of having to use remote channels may also be a barrier to access services for some.

I commented:

DigiCitizen

DIGI CITIZEN

DIGI CITIZEN

Digital skills test:

I feel like I’ve fallen a little behind, for example, when it comes to working with computers. It’s easy to use my smartphone and perform software updates, but I don’t even know how to install new apps on my computer anymore. Trust is also an important factor. When I’m not familiar with computer issues, I can’t trust what’s safe. I took a digital skills test, but I can’t attach a picture of the results here. I scored 3 points on the test. 8 points was a full score. Ranked intermediate: Level 3 (intermediate) users are able to perform routine and other well-defined tasks. They can also solve straightforward problems on their own. This may be largely due to the fact that I am not very interested in learning new things about IT. For me, simple things would suffice.

Self assessment:

This was a nice task. I learned to search for information and it was nice to read other people’s blog posts on the subject.