DIGI CITIZEN

Kela, Omakanta, and Keva/Elo

I have looked at all the services that are provided by Kela, and they are quite comprehensive. There is some kind of service available from birth until retirement. For instance, there is a file of every available Kela service for the year 2019, it contains 76 pages!.

Personally, as for Kela services, I only use the European health care card. I have had it already for almost 10 years, but I still haven’t used it once, luckily. Previously I have received financial aid for my studies and housing benefits for many years, when I did my high school and bachelor’s degree.

As for my family, my mum and dad both receive their pensions from Kela, and my dad also receives housing benefits from Kela

In my opinion, the Kela services are quite good, and the current service level should be maintained, even at the expense of raising taxes.

I always access Omakanta through my smartphone or PC. I use mobile ID (Mobiilivarmenne to login). I access Omakanta quite rarely.

I have accessed my retirement info thorough Elo, and according to it, my pension will be 1780€/month if I retire at 67 years and 2091€/month if I retire at 70

Digital shops

I have visited eBay.com, as I have been a long-time user of the platform, since the year 2009. In my opinion, the prices are considerably lower than in the local market, but the quality of the products is also lower. Another negative aspect of eBay are the long shipping times. If I buy cheaper products, they are normally shipped from China, and the shipping time might be around one month. The sellers are normally reliable, and they always send the products. If some product gets lost in transit, they are normally willing to send a replacement product free of charge.

Amazon is another service that I use regularly. The prices are usually cheaper than in the local market. Another aspect I have noticed is that the shipping times are quite short, and home delivery shipping is free if you order total is over 39€. This is an advantage over the local shops, as not many shops offer free home delivery shipping. The products are always of good quality and many of them have useful user reviews. By looking at those reviews, it is possible to evaluate the quality of the product. All in all, Amazon is very reputable in my opinion, and I can recommend it highly.

App from my field

In my field in logistics, I use almost every day a website called Cargo.one. It lets me book air cargo capacity from numerous airlines. I can compare the prices and transit times and choose the most suitable one for my client’s needs. The website is very user friendly, and the interface is easy to navigate. The service is also fast, fetching prices for different routes in just a few seconds. The booking is also easy, with an automatic confirmation message sent to my work email. The website also launches new features on a regular basis, and they listen to their users, in case they have some feature request. All in all, I am very happy with the service and have included it in my daily workflow.

Digitalization and digital gap

There are many different risks and challenges for people who do not use virtual services. For instance, in Finland, many banking services are available through the internet. Many banks have closed local branch offices, and the nearest office might be far away from the user.

Many jobs are currently going through a transformation and the old manual labor jobs might not exist in the future. This means that the current workers must learn new IT skills in order to be employable also in the future.

Many public services, such as doctors’ appointments or tax services are mostly available via the internet. The appoints must be done through the internet and some doctors only offer e-appointments. If a person doesn’t use digital services, then they are unable to use those aforementioned services.

The persons who are unable to use make use of digital services are at risk of being deprived of essential resources for development and wealth generation. They are unable to develop their skills to be employable int the future. This creates discrimination and inequality.

I believe that the digital gap affects different generations differently. For instance, the older generations are more affected by it, as their IT skill might be weaker, and they are not able to use the modern technologies as efficiently. On the other hand, newer generations were born when the modern technologies were already in use, and they know how to make use of them. This is another point that creates inequality.

Digital competence test

In my opinion, this digital competence test was quite comprehensive, as it contains 61 questions related to digitalization. The results reflect my own opinion about my digital skills and knowledge as I scored quite high on three out of the four different sections. The sections with the lowest score, communication, is something I should focus more in the future, as my knowledge and experience in using social media is quite low. Social media is an important marketing opportunity for many companies and I should start using it more to gain knowledge on the best practices

Self-reflection

I have learned a lot about digitalization from researching information for this blog and the assignments. I have understood that there is no one right answer for how digitalization should be done and that it is a complex issue, as it affects so many different industries and people in different ways.

I have learned that digitalization affects my work industry, logistics, in many ways. It seems that the future of the industry is closely related to digitalization as many tools of the trade are being transformed into digital only tools.

I personally don’t have any problems with digitalization as I have always learned rather quickly how to use new software and programs such as ERPs and chat applications. But there is always room for improvement. I, for example, don’t use social media in my daily work or life, and I am not very familiar with all the different social media applications and their features.

I believe that more and more industries will be digitalized in the future, and so more attention should be paid to the different digital applications and possible problems of digitalization.

As part of this assignment, I have commented on the following blogs:

-https://blogi.savonia.fi/mattivehvilainen/digi-citizen/

–https://blogi.savonia.fi/miiakokoistinen/digi-citizen/

–https://blogi.savonia.fi/sarinsivusto/digi-citizen/