DIGI CITIZEN

DIGI CITIZEN

KELA

Kela’s task is to manage and develop citizens’ social security. Kela is responsible for paying pensions, child benefits, student allowance and housing allowance, among other things. Personally, our family is only subject to child benefits from Kela’s operations. When I was younger, I also received student financial aid from Kela.

My Kanta pages

I was able to access My Kanta Pages by logging in with my online banking credentials.

Pension (Keva)

The calculator did not show me how much pension I would receive at the age of 63, because my lowest retirement age is 67. If I retired at the age of 68, I would receive a pension of EUR 2600.

Online shopping

I have visited some digital store pages with my children who have wanted to order clothes from online stores, for example. There are a huge number of online stores, and even within a single online store there can be a huge number of sellers and entrepreneurs who sell their products, as is the case with Amazon and Booking, for example. Competition in online stores is fierce, and it can be difficult to figure out which product is actually affordable, because the prices of some products may be affordable, but the price is often increased by import and delivery costs. I haven’t been hit with scams in online stores, but since there are a lot of online stores, they can also be hit by scammers, making them untrustworthy. Some times it has happened to me, for example, with Trivago, that the price of trivago is ostensibly a promotional price, but the benefits and price may actually have been better on the hotel’s own website.

Application from your field

I familiarised myself with the Therapy Navigator service from my own field. I wanted to get to know it because it is currently widely advertised as solving the ongoing mental health crisis in Finland. My experience was that the service was easy to find when you knew it existed, but the therapy navigator as such does not guide me to any treatment if I really suffer from mental health symptoms. There were a lot of meters to fill, and if the respondent was really depressed, they might not get the right help even after filling in the meter. User experience made me think that many digital solutions can be good, but they do not in themselves help anyone’s situation if the information they produce has not been carefully instructed to be directed to the caring employee.

Digitalisation and the digital divide

Today, digitalization is everywhere in the Western world. However, we still have a huge number of people who cannot keep up with digital developments. One such person is my own mother, who is 80 years old and has never learned to use any digital tools other than a little smartphone. With a smartphone, they can read news and whatsapp messages, but they cannot, for example, handle banking or tax matters. There is a risk that if a person does not know how to use virtual services and does not have anyone to help them use, they will not be able to take care of their own affairs. For example, many small towns do not have their own tax office or bank, and if a person is not able to take care of their affairs online and there is no office where things can be done, they will not be taken care of and, at worst, the person will be left without a livelihood. Also, not all young people are necessarily able or willing to use digital services, in which case access to services should be secured even without digitalisation.

I commented on these blogs:

DIGI CITIZEN – Laura’s site (savonia.fi)

DIGI CITIZEN – Marika’s site (savonia.fi)

DIGI CITIZEN – Johanna’s site (savonia.fi)

Digital Competency test:

Self evaluation From this assignment, I learned how extensive digitalization is and how each of us is starting to be part of the digital world, whether we like it or not. Digitalization affects both the basic services we receive as well as working life and free time. We can’t work without digitalization, and we don’t have to. Digitalization helps to do many things easier, faster and more efficiently. Again, I don’t need to physically go to school or the library, but I can do it digitally while studying at home. It has been extremely educational and useful to read other people’s blogs as well. In adult learning, seeing and learning from other tasks is often neglected, and through these blog posts it was possible to see the texts of students from different fields