Nine ways in which your organisation will benefit from digital official communication

Benefits of Suomi.fi Messages for public administration organisations

Public administration organisations are expected to provide faster, safer and more customer-oriented electronic communications. Citizens and companies want to use the authorities’ services easily and without any unnecessary delays or extra complications. Suomi.fi Messages is a national messaging service that combines these needs and provides a solution suited for both organisations and their customers’ everyday use.

It is not a question of a communication channel only but of an entity that reduces administrative work, supports meeting statutory obligations and improves the customer experience.

In this blog, we list nine ways in which your organisation will benefit from the digital official communications provided by Suomi.fi Messages.

1. Cost savings right from the first message

Correspondence on paper is slow and expensive. Printing, enveloping, mailing, removing staples and scanning cost money and take your staff’s time. In addition, there is a risk that, if mailed on paper, the letter may not reach the recipient either on time or at all.

By digitalising letters, your organisation saves money right from the first message. In addition to reduced mailing costs, you will reduce administrative costs when many work phases are no longer needed. From 2026 onwards, Suomi.fi Messages has been estimated to have more than four million users. Therefore, there will be plenty of recipients for electronic messages.

If your organisation needs to send messages as a verifiable service, you will make significant savings by utilising the electronic verifiable service functionality in Suomi.fi Messages. A message sent as an electronic verifiable service is legally valid, but without the cost and waiting time of a letter sent as a verifiable service on paper.

In situations where the message must be sent on paper, you can use the printing, enveloping and distribution service (TKJ) of Suomi.fi Messages. This way, you can also send messages to those who want to receive paper mail: Suomi.fi Messages sorts the sent messages on your behalf into messages to be sent electronically and letters to be delivered by paper mail. When put out to tender by the Digital and Population Data Services Agency, the TKJ service of Suomi.fi Messages will be cheaper than regular mailing and saves your organisation’s resources by eliminating the work phases related to preparing to send paper mail.

2. The delivery of electronic messages is easy to monitor

In Suomi.fi Messages, you can monitor the progress of the messages you have sent. You will be informed of when the message has been delivered to the customer and when the customer has read the message they have received. This way, you will always know whether the recipient has been reached. And, if necessary, you can supplement your customer communications with a telephone call or a text message, for example.

Electronic verifiable service provides legally binding confirmation that the recipient has been served the notice. Your organisation will be notified immediately when the customer has acknowledged the receipt of the electronic verifiable service message. This is particularly important, for example, with decisions with an appeal period. You can also receive an electronic confirmation of the receipt of a paper notice delivered as a verifiable service sent through the TKJ service, which speeds up the process.

3. A reliable and secure service for both the sender and the recipient

Organisations always identify the recipient using a personal identity code or business ID when sending electronic messages. Your customers can access and read the Suomi.fi Messages they have received using strong identification.

No ads, no spam, no extra messages. Thanks to strong identification and only approved senders, your organisation can also safely add attachments and links to electronic messages. Your customers do not need to suspect the authenticity of the messages.

This ensures that the service is safe to use for your organisation’s customers. At the same time, your organisation has the opportunity to make electronic communications more customer-friendly when you can easily direct your customers to find the right e-services or forms.

4. Better customer experience

From the citizens’ perspective, official communications can be fragmented: different authorities use different channels, applications and login methods. For citizens, Suomi.fi Messages brings relief: it brings important official messages together into one place. Customers do not need to remember several IDs or download multiple applications. It suffices for them to use strong identification, such as online banking codes, in the Suomi.fi Web Service or the Suomi.fi mobile application. If necessary, your customer will be provided with a link that directs them to continue their service matter in another e-service.

Suomi.fi Messages provides a uniform, clear and recognisable communication channel. When different authorities use Suomi.fi Messages, customers can see the electronic messages they receive in a uniform format. This will make communications clearer. A unified service and user interface will also make it easier for customers to use your organisation’s services, regardless of which e-service the customer is using. This also reduces the organisations’ need to advise customers and streamlines the use of services.

5. Up-to-date customer register without maintenance work

Suomi.fi Messages provides your organisation with up-to-date information on who receives official messages electronically. This information can change in a matter of seconds as users can personally manage their choices in the service settings. The email addresses of the recipients via which they are notified of new messages received are also kept up to date in the register maintained by the Digital and Population Data Services Agency. In other words, you do not need to maintain your own contact information registers or ensure that they are updated. Your customers only need to remember to change their data in one place if their e-mail address changes or they want to go back to receiving paper mail.

Society is increasingly moving to e-services, which increases the need to maintain contact information data in different channels. When your organisation uses Suomi.fi Messages in all official communications, you will benefit from the same, centralised and up-to-date register. This ensures that your electronic messages will reach the recipients in the way they expect to reached.

6. Easy integration and opportunity for automation

Suomi.fi Messages can be integrated either directly into an organisation’s own system or into a software provider’s systems. The versatile functionalities of the REST API can also be used to add more automation to processes, for example by utilising the state information of messages functionality. This way, you can speed up service processes and free up the time of your personnel to carry out their core tasks.

7. Unified and scalable solution

Suomi.fi Messages is equally well suited for the needs of both small municipalities and large agencies. You can start by first converting the notifications and any other customer messages in one service into electronic format and later extending the use of Suomi.fi Messages to other services as well. From the customers’ perspective, the communication channel will remain unchanged all the time.

8. Environmental friendliness

Reducing paper mail is not just a cost issue. Giving up paper mail also reduces your organisation’s carbon footprint, as the transport of letters and the emissions caused by them will decrease.

9. Ready for the future

Legislation will change, and so will the customers’ expectations. As legal amendments enter into force in 2026, adults who use digital services will primarily receive their mail from the authorities electronically in Suomi.fi Messages. In practice, this means that when an adult using the authorities’ electronic e-services identifies themselves for the first time, Suomi.fi Messages will be activated for them, unless they already use the service. In the future, the change will also oblige the authorities to send notifications and other messages to an increasing extent primarily in electronic format to Suomi.fi Messages to those who use e-services of the authorities.

Suomi.fi Messages provides your organisation with a single and free electronic communication channel for reaching customers. Later in the future, electronic messages sent through the service will also be visible in other digital mail services selected by the public without you having to take any additional measures.

By deploying Suomi.fi Messages using the REST API now, you will ensure that your organisation is ready for the forthcoming changes and the customers’ freedom of choice. We at the Digital and Population Data Services Agency will ensure that the entity is implemented and built so that you only need to deploy one messaging service: Suomi.fi Messages.

In other words, it is a good time to start planning the deployment or expansion of the use of Suomi.fi Messages in your organisation. We at the Digital and Population Data Services Agency will support you in planning the deployment of the service.

Read our instructions on the Suomi.fi developers website and contact us if necessary: viestit-kayttoonotot@dvv.fi 

Henna-Maria Vähämäki, Digital and Population Data Services Agency