The politics of Finland take place within the framework of a parliamentary representative democracy. Finland is a republic whose head of state is President Alexander Stubb, who leads the nation's foreign policy and is the supreme commander of the Finnish Defence Forces. Finland's head of government is Prime Minister Petteri Orpo, who leads the nation's executive branch, called the Finnish Government. Legislative power is vested in the Parliament of Finland, and the Government has limited rights to amend or extend legislation. The Constitution of Finland vests power to both the President and Government: the President has veto power over parliamentary decisions, although this power can be overruled by a majority vote in the Parliament.
Interoperability is a characteristic of a product or system to work with other products or systems. While the term was initially defined for information technology or systems engineering services to allow for information exchange, a broader definition takes into account social, political, and organizational factors that impact system-to-system performance.
Health Level Seven, abbreviated to HL7, is a range of global standards for the transfer of clinical and administrative health data between applications with the aim to improve patient outcomes and health system performance. The HL7 standards focus on the application layer, which is "layer 7" in the Open Systems Interconnection model. The standards are produced by Health Level Seven International, an international standards organization, and are adopted by other standards issuing bodies such as American National Standards Institute and International Organization for Standardization. There are a range of primary standards that are commonly used across the industry, as well as secondary standards which are less frequently adopted.
A mobile signature is a digital signature generated either on a mobile phone or on a SIM card on a mobile phone.
IEEE 802.11 – or more correctly IEEE 802.11-1997 or IEEE 802.11-1999 – refer to the original version of the IEEE 802.11 wireless networking standard released in 1997 and clarified in 1999. Most of the protocols described by this early version are rarely used today.
IEEE 802.11a-1999 or 802.11a was an amendment to the IEEE 802.11 wireless local network specifications that defined requirements for an orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) communication system. It was originally designed to support wireless communication in the unlicensed national information infrastructure (U-NII) bands as regulated in the United States by the Code of Federal Regulations, Title 47, Section 15.407.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to Finland.
Gigabit Home Networking (G.hn) is a specification for wired home networking that supports speeds up to 2 Gbit/s and operates over four types of legacy wires: telephone wiring, coaxial cables, power lines and plastic optical fiber. Some benefits of a multi-wire standard are lower equipment development costs and lower deployment costs for service providers.
All European countries show eGovernment initiatives, mainly related to the improvement of governance at the national level. Significant eGovernment activities also take place at the European Commission level as well. There is an extensive list of eGovernment Fact Sheets maintained by the European Commission.
Administration system for the state information system (RIHA) of Estonia is the Estonian catalogue of public sector information systems. It serves as the national registry of systems, components, services, data models, semantic assets.
A blockchain is a distributed ledger with growing lists of records (blocks) that are securely linked together via cryptographic hashes. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a timestamp, and transaction data. Since each block contains information about the previous block, they effectively form a chain, with each additional block linking to the ones before it. Consequently, blockchain transactions are irreversible in that, once they are recorded, the data in any given block cannot be altered retroactively without altering all subsequent blocks.
e-Estonia refers to the digital society of Estonia, which facilitates its citizens' and residents' interactions with the state through the use of ICT solutions. Estonian e-services created under this initiative include e-Tax Board, e-Business, e-Banking, e-Ticket, e-School, University via the internet, the e-Governance Academy, i-Voting, as well as the release of several mobile applications. According to the goals set in Estonia's Digital Agenda 2030, the country aims to assure that high-speed internet is available across the country, the digital government services are the best in the world, and the country's cyberspace is reliable and safe by 2030.
Hyperledger is an umbrella project of open source blockchains and related tools that the Linux Foundation started in December 2015. IBM, Intel, and SAP Ariba have contributed to support the collaborative development of blockchain-based distributed ledgers. It was renamed the Hyperledger Foundation in October 2021.
The once-only principle is an e-government concept that aims to ensure that citizens, institutions, and companies only have to provide certain standard information to the authorities and administrations once. By incorporating data protection regulations and the explicit consent of the users, the public administration is allowed to re-use and exchange the data with each other. The once-only principle is part of the European Union's (EU) plans to further develop the Digital Single Market by reducing the administrative burden on citizens and businesses.
A blockchain is a shared database that records transactions between two parties in an immutable ledger. Blockchain documents and confirms pseudonymous ownership of all transactions in a verifiable and sustainable way. After a transaction is validated and cryptographically verified by other participants or nodes in the network, it is made into a "block" on the blockchain. A block contains information about the time the transaction occurred, previous transactions, and details about the transaction. Once recorded as a block, transactions are ordered chronologically and cannot be altered. This technology rose to popularity after the creation of Bitcoin, the first application of blockchain technology, which has since catalyzed other cryptocurrencies and applications.
Decentralized finance offers financial instruments without relying on intermediaries such as brokerages, exchanges, or banks by using smart contracts on a blockchain, mainly Ethereum. DeFi platforms allow people to lend or borrow funds from others, speculate on price movements on assets using derivatives, trade cryptocurrencies, insure against risks, and earn interest in savings-like accounts. DeFi uses a layered architecture and highly composable building blocks. Some applications promote high-interest rates but are subject to high risk. Coding errors and hacks have been common in DeFi.
Vastaamo was a Finnish private psychotherapy service provider founded in 2008. On 21 October 2020, Vastaamo announced that its patient database had been hacked. Private information obtained by the perpetrators was used in an attempt to extort Vastaamo and, later, its clients. The extorters demanded 40 bitcoins, roughly worth 450,000 euros at the time, and threatened to publish the records if the ransom was not paid. To add pressure to their demands, the extorters published hundreds of patient records a day on a Tor message board.
Polygon is a blockchain platform which aims to create a multi-chain blockchain system compatible with Ethereum. As with Ethereum, it uses a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism for processing transactions on-chain. Polygon's native token is named MATIC. Matic is an ERC-20 token, allowing for compatibility with other Ethereum cryptocurrencies. It is operated by Polygon Labs.
The Nordic Institute for Interoperability Solutions (NIIS) is a non-profit established in 2017 by Estonia and Finland, with the mission "to develop e-governance solutions...with the X-Road technology used nationwide in the Estonian X-tee and in the Finnish Suomi.fi Data Exchange Layer services". It is funded by both countries, with around 1M€ annually. In 2019, Iceland was invited as well, and later the Faroe Islands.
