Questions and answers on information systems and enterprise architecture - Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment

Is the intention that the KEHA Centre will maintain and develop the systems based on a model in the TE Services 2024 reform?

Is the intention for the central government to provide municipalities the customer information systems and e-services free of charge for a certain period or indefinitely?

Which programmes is the customer service staff expected to master following the launch of the new service model in May 2022?

In May 2022, the Job Market Finland service platform was launched for production use. The platform is the “one stop shop” for TE services throughout Finland. While customer work and e-services will continue to be based on the URA system, the access to services will happen through Job Market Finland.

Does a human-centred approach mean that people are taken into account both as system users and experts and as customers? User-friendly, clear and well-functioning systems are needed on both sides of the table.

As municipalities become responsible for organising services, is it possible that client data is stored in two different personal data registers in municipalities, i.e. can there be two data controllers?

The KEHA Centre and the employment authorities would be joint controllers of the national information pool. As an employment authority, the municipality responsible for organising services would be responsible for the duties of controller with regard to its customers.

The Job Market is also available to employers. Nowadays, employers rarely have time to post vacancies online and instead they look for quick and tailored results. Has this been taken into account?

The Job Market will be a significant improvement in services for employers too. The potential use of the service platform in 2022-2023 will require significant development work, in which it is important to take into account the needs of the employers.

Are grass-roots experts also involved in the development work?

At the end of the job search, there is no reliable information available on whether a customer relationship ends because of employment or other reasons. This is key information that would be of interest to many.

This is an essential question in terms of the success and impact of the TE services reform 2024. The local government pilots on employment have recently faced this challenge.

Efforts will be made to improve the monitoring of measures and their effectiveness as well as the TE services reform 2024 as a whole by utilising the Incomes Register data. A preliminary study on the matter, prepared jointly by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment and the KEHA Centre, is about to be launched.

How well does the information system solution support the management of employment services across municipal borders and cooperation areas? Will municipalities also welcome jobseekers from other areas? How is labour mobility taken into account?

In addition to opportunities, the creation of interfaces may also involve potential threats. How and to what extent will personal data ultimately be transferred and to whom? What is the data protection of these other systems? Can data on jobseekers be transferred to any system from one register maintained by the central government?

In the TE services reform 2024, the roles of different operators will also change as concerns the processing of customer data. This is a potential data protection risk for which the Government’s proposal must prepare. Because of the importance of the matter, the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment and the KEHA Centre commissioned an external assessment of the data protection impacts, which was completed in spring 2022.

Information on jobseekers cannot be transferred from the national information pool to other systems without restrictions. Provisions concerning the purposes for which customer information would be used and the data to be processed would be laid down in an act. As joint controllers, the KEHA Centre and the employment authorities are responsible for processing of customer information according with law.

Have artificial intelligence and machine learning been utilised in the new systems?

Does legislation and architecture take into account the wider use of data to identify phenomena and anticipate impact chains? If the use of data is limited to a specific task only, this will not be realised.