Open administration benefits everyone

A new online service made government procurement information accessible to everyone in September 2017. Through the Tutkihankintoja.fi service, all Finnish citizens can review and analyse real-time information regarding government procurement. The aim of the service is to increase the transparency of government activities and improve the government’s procurement activities. At the same time, companies are provided access to valuable market information.

The service is available free of charge, and since the beginning of 2016, it has been used to publish information about government purchases totalling over €6 million in worth. The information is updated in almost real time, and details of new organisations are added as possible. Hansel was commissioned to realise the service by the Ministry of Finance.

“Every Finn benefits from the transparency of public funds and from open administration culture. Through the service, companies, too, obtain market information in a new way”, Hansel Ltd’s Managing Director Anssi Pihkala said in the launch event for Tutkihankintoja.fi.

For safety reasons, authorities working with national defence and safety – such as the Ministry of Defence’s administrative branch, the National Police Board, and the Finnish Border Guard – are not included in the service. In addition, certain information may be kept confidential to ensure the protection of individuals or to promote general safety.

The information published through the service has been available to all before, as required by the Act on the Openness of Government Activities, but previously, access was only granted by request. This made the acquisition of the information difficult and required resources from both the party requesting the information and the organisation receiving the request. Now all the information is easily available through a single service.

Global pioneer in openness

In addition to the Tutkihankintoja.fi service, procurement information is available to all through the avoindata.fi website. This way, new services and applications can be developed and used freely for various purposes. All the benefits of the Tutkihankintoja.fi service and its data cannot be gauged yet, because similar services are not available anywhere in the world.

“The Tutkihankintoja.fi is a pioneering service on a global level. As far as we know, a similar service has not been established by a government before. It is difficult to provide immediate calculations on the savings produced by the service, but we believe that there will be savings. We have discussed potential studies regarding the benefits of the project with representatives of Aalto University”, Pihkala says.

The Tutkihankintoja.fi service is part of the government’s key project of digitalising public services, including procurement. The service is developed on a continuous basis by Hansel and the Ministry of Finance.