130 Municipalities Apply to Suspend Mandatory Suomi.fi Messages
Around 130 Finnish municipalities have applied to suspend at least some mandatory Suomi.fi messages, potentially leaving residents in dozens of towns without official notices via the platform.
Some 130 municipalities across Finland have applied to suspend at least some mandatory Suomi.fi messages, which could leave residents in dozens of towns without official notices via the platform, YLE reports, citing the Digital and Population Data Services Agency. The agency cited tight budgets and legacy IT as reasons and said more than 40 percent of the country's roughly 300 municipalities have sought exemptions for at least one function or system.
Joonas Kankaanrinne, the agency's director, said many requests concern ageing systems that would be costly or technically impractical to retrofit. Many recruitment systems also do not handle personal identity numbers, so routine messages such as interview rejections cannot be routed via Suomi.fi.
About half of the municipalities seeking exemptions are small, with up to 20,000 residents, and they send relatively few notices. Punkalaidun recently applied for an exemption for technical, functional and cost-efficiency reasons, office manager Kaija Seppä told YLE.
The agency plans to speed adoption by working with software vendors so future versions of their programs support Suomi.fi integration. Under the support services law, public administration bodies must adopt Suomi.fi services. Kankaanrinne warned that continuing parallel systems, or adding new ones without an approved exemption, would leave a municipality failing to meet legal notification requirements. Exemptions can be granted for technical, functional, cost-efficiency or information-security reasons. The development follows Tampere's mid‑April move to prompt adults to activate Suomi.fi messages when using public e‑services the city's April activation push.
Earlier coverage
Catch the full story over at YLE
