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Nortal invests in the GovTech era – Finland must place citizen-centric digital services at the forefront
An aging population, challenges emerging in the healthcare sector, and the rising demand for e-services require that future public digital services be more closely aligned with citizens’ needs.
Finnish healthcare magazine Mediuutiset highlights Nortal Finland’s investments in the next stage of the digital evolution in public services: GovTech. The GovTech approach aims to place citizen-centric digital services development at the forefront, to ease cost pressures, and to address the evolving structures of society and citizens’ needs. As part of this development work, Nortal Finland appointed Mikko Lehto as Head of the Government & Health Business Area in autumn 2023.
– Mikko Lehto, Nortal Head of Government & Health business area
Our GovTech solution seamlessly integrates the transformative development journey that digitizes public service processes with strategic digital transformation consulting, enabling this change.
We have talked about FinTech in finance and HealthTech in health for a long time – now it’s time to discuss GovTech in government.
In Finland, we cannot stress enough the fragmented nature of the public digital services needed in citizens’ various life situations, which are spread across many agency systems and platforms currently. Accessing specific available services would require citizens to know where they are located and who provides them, and the services are not personalized to their individual needs, for example, based on their life situation.
Lehto highlights GovTech as a way to achieve this, prioritizing citizens’ needs and transforming toward more comprehensive, predictable, accessible, and user-friendly citizen services. It is strongly based on improved collaboration between government departments and the public–private sectors to accelerate the development and delivery of citizen-centric digital services, common platforms, and ecosystems.
“Our goal is to enhance our position as a trusted digital transformation partner in Finland’s government,” Lehto says. He emphasizes Nortal’s specific expertise in data analytics and artificial intelligence, user experience design, cloud transformation services, and low-code development in IT.
– Mikko Lehto, Nortal Head of Government & Health business area
Public sector digital services are too often prioritizing the needs of the government over those of the citizens. At the same time, not everyone is a digital native, widening the digital divide. In the future, digital services must become more accessible, user-friendly, and personalized to individual needs.
The demand for GovTech consultancy and services is growing as the Finnish public sector faces the challenge of doing more with less. Lehto emphasizes that while many processes have seamlessly transitioned to digital, ongoing societal challenges will necessitate further digital development. This includes enhancing the productivity of service-providing organizations and crafting even more comprehensive services to improve the citizen experience. Factors such as the aging population, the challenges emerging in the healthcare sector, and the increasing service demands highlight the urgency for digital innovation.
Lehto concludes by highlighting that challenges always bring opportunities. Advancing to the next stage of the digital evolution, placing citizen-centric digital services at the forefront, is a great opportunity. The GovTech approach aims to streamline the functional service paths by offering personalized digital solutions, tailored to citizens’ life situations – eliminating the need for citizens to actively search and retrieve information
The discussion around GovTech is currently in its early stages, and we at Nortal are eager to contribute to shaping the course. Explore the full article in Mediuutiset for a closer look at our approach to GovTech.
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