Map the benefits

Public administration and other actors continuously maintain and produce a huge amount of data. However, different organisations often collect exactly the same data from the public over and over again.

As part of the EU, Finland has committed to the principle by which authorities only ask citizens and companies for the same data one time. This is referred to as the once-only principle.

The production, collection, management and maintenance of data costs. It can therefore be thought that data collected once gains more value every time it is reused. When data is shared and reused between organisations, more value is created throughout society.

Data should only be collected once and then shared and used together.

When your organisation shares data with others, it

• promotes good administration and the principle of publicity
• streamlines services and decision-making processes
• reduces overlapping work and saves resources.

The utilisation of data between different organisations is hampered by the fact that data has often been stored and described using different technologies, formats and logic. In addition sufficient descriptions of the data are not always available. It may also be that an organisation’s operating methods or laws do not allow for data sharing.

To make it possible for different organisations to utilise each other's data efficiently, the data must be interoperable

• semantically
• technically
• legally
• organisationally.

These four levels of interoperability are based on the EU’s European Interoperability Framework (EUR-Lex)Opens in a new window..

Read more on Interoperable Europe PortalOpens in a new window..

Your organisation can

• open data to the public so it is freely available for anyone to use
• share data with partners on a contractual basis in a controlled and secure manner
• utilise data produced by other organisations in their own services.

Your organisation will also likely have to

• describe the metadata of some of their data resources to make these available to other organisations
• describe the metadata they utilise (such as concepts) with shared tools.

An organisation can, and usually does, have several roles at the same time. On the front page of the guide, you can select which roles you want instructions for.

Society as a whole benefits when you open your data for use by others. Opening of data also provides a directly measurable advantage for your organisations.

When you publish your data as open data, you

• avoid processing separate requests for information
• save time and effort.
• improve data quality
• make your organisation’s work more important to society
• can promote your organisation’s strategic data management goals.

Please note that the authorities have a statutory obligation to open some of their data. For more information on obligations please see the Pay attention to laws and provisions page.

National solutions for opening data

Sharing the data you produce with other organisations will benefit society as a whole. Data sharing often also a provides a directly measurable advantage for your organisations.

When you share data with other organisations, you can:

• receive income in the form of licence and user fees
• promote partnerships related to data sharing.

Please note that the authorities have a statutory obligation to share some of their data. For more information on obligations please see the Take note of laws and regulations page.

National solutions for data sharing

When you utilise data produced by others, you:

• save money because you do not have to collect information yourself
• save citizens from providing the same information several times to different authorities
• focus your resources on providing services, not on data collection
• can ensure that the data you have is up to date in different information systems.

National solutions for data utilisation

Datasets produced and managed by organisations are described using metadata, i.e. information on data.

A well-functioning circular data economy requires that jointly agreed definitions and parsing of metadata exist.

When organisations use shared methods and tools to describe and structure their metadata

• data in society maintains its integrity and is interoperable
• secure processing of data in accordance with user rights is ensured
• the sender and recipient of the information can understand the data in the same way
• data can be found using jointly agreed search criteria and mechanisms
• the legal reliability of data processing is better when there are uniform interpretations of the data
• the data lifecycle from production to destruction/archiving is managed in the systems.

When an organisation can use common data structure descriptions

• the costs related to the description of concepts and data structures are reduced
• the utilisation of data, such as application development, is sped up and money is saved.

National solutions for promoting data interoperability