Kela

My reconnection with Kela started when I was 18 years old and I rented my first own apartment. I was a student and not living with my parents anymore, so I started to get student and housing benefits from Kela. Shortly after I graduated, I got a job, so I bought my first home. Therefore, my connection to Kela ended. Ten years later, I got my first baby and I started to get money from Kela when I was on maternity leave. From my perspective, it’s a privilege to live in Finland and get 9-months-long paid maternity leave. After my maternity leave, I got back to work. However, I only worked 30 hours a week, so Kela paid little extra money to support our family. We also get child benefit every month from Kela until our kids are 17 years old. These benefits provide great opportunities for people who have children in Finland.

But I believe that growing digitalization forces also Kela to create some new alternatives to their benefit systems. For example, Kela should think about how to support the people who work 20 hours every week and their kids are at kindergarten. Normally 20 hours of work is not enough to support your family, but it is also hard to combine that with some other job. If you think about it, 20 hours can be 4 hours every day but 5 days at week. But the truth is that when you are working for only 20 hours a week, you need another job as well. In addition, remote working is a great opportunity for many people, so Kela should consider these people too. People who are working from home and don’t necessarily need full time daycare for their kids might still need Kela’s support too. I think Kela should support these new ways of working somehow and create new benefit systems so that everyone, no matter how you work, would be able to live a good life.

Because of digitalization people use more and more digitalized services. I have always made all my applications to Kela via internet because it is easier and faster. I also get help when needed and I’ve been able to follow the progress of my cases. I believe that in 10 years we do not have Kela’s offices anymore because we can use Kela’s services via internet. However, in my opinion, customer service has to be still very well executed, for example by videos or chats. I’m sure many people still need also traditional interaction.

Omakanta

I have become familiar with Omakanta due to my kids. There are prescriptions, diagnosis and lots of very important information that I have needed many times. My child was over 50 days in the hospital during his first year so I used Omakanta services a lot during that year. Omakanta service needs strong authentication and today it is possible to do online. In my opinion this kind of online platform is very useful and practical. I signed in with my bank ID.

Keva

Keva’s website was new to me. It was actually very interesting to see my pension age and how my salary affects it. It was not surprised that predicted pension is quite small compared to the salary. My pension age is now about 68-70 years, but I believe it will still change many times before I really get retired. I’m also pretty sure that the entire retirement system will experience some changes within next 20 years, because entrepreneurship and casual work are increasing.

Digital shops

Ebay and Amazon are very famous webstores. I have to admit that I have read various articles about these companies but I have never visited their web pages, until now. I went to peek at the pages and at least The Amazon is quite reliable.  I think the prices of all these online stores are almost the same as in local stores here in Finland. Maybe the prices are little bit smaller than in local shops but not much. It is easy to say that service is very easy and we can buy/order things and service very easily. Also shipping is very well organized and it is easy to find out how it works and how much it costs. But still, I like to buy my shoes, clothes and other stuff from stores rather than from webstores. I feel that changing and return is so difficult if I use webstores, which is why I don’t use them. I also try to be responsible consumer and use as much as I can local and Finnish companies services.  

Teams

I chose Teams because I use it daily at work. Me and my coworkers communicates via Teams software. In Teams we use chat conversations, calls and video calls for communication. Our weekly meetings are also organized as a Teams-meeting. It is accessible to everyone, and Teams is very easy and simple to use. Teams is workspace for real-time collaboration and share information.  

Digitalization and digital gap

Today it is normal that kids from very young ages are using different digital devices. These kids don’t know how to be without Iphones and Ipads, because for them it is the new normal. Some little children can even use Ipads better than their parents. For example, for my four-year-old son his favorite thing to do with an Ipad is to watch videos from Youtube. When I was in his age, I was a big fan of Walt Disney princesses, but my son is a big fan of young boys and girls who makes videos in Youtube. So, times have definitely changed.

We all should start to use all kind of digital services and different kind of e platforms. It is very important to know how to use them, because other services are rarely available anymore. If we can’t use them, we must study how to use them. I understand that for the older generation who doesn’t necessary use the virtual services as fluently as younger generation, this can be quite a challenge. To make the digital gap smaller it is very important to educate people of all ages.

Digitalization will decrease easy- and basic jobs in the future. This means that we all must have some special skills and also demand of education will increase. Digitalization is such a big part of the present world, and technology develops all the time. We can’t stop it from happening, so it’s better to learn and go along.

Self reflection

This assignment section was very interesting. KELA and Omakanta websites are very familiar to me but visiting Keva website was new to me. I hadn’t done that before. Now I know a little bit better, how much pension I will be paid in the future. I learned that digitalization is true and we all can make purchases from all over the world. Applications makes services easier and it is very easy to get service with the help of applications. Also I learned that the digital gap is true and it is quite severe problem for elderly people and low educated people. We all need to advance our skills all the time. The assignment section also made me consider my own behavior in the digital environment and its security.

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