A vision of public administration in the 2020s

The development needs of public administration are related to the challenges of today and, in the longer term, to its changing role in society. We look ahead to 2025 and envisage the expectations public administration will face and examine how these expectations can be fulfilled in practice.

What do we do?

We are preparing a discussion paper and concrete proposals for reforming the practices and leadership of public administration. The emphasis is on the central government.

We look for ways to increase the unity, openness to change and service-orientation of public administration – without forgetting the need to include citizens and the international dimension.

In the future, the critical requirement for central government is that it is able to lead and guide the implementation of major reforms. New kind of leadership and practices are needed also due to the fact that the traditional and two-tier administrative model in Finland is changing into a three-tier model.

When preparing the discussion paper, we will consider the ideas born in the training programme for senior civil servants and in the cross-administrative experiments supported by Sitra, as well as recent studies and reports and international examples, whose adaptability to Finland will be evaluated.

The aim is to bring the public administration renewal forward in the programme and action plan of the next government.

Who is involved?

Sitra’s work is led by the steering group chaired by Jouni Backman, Senior Advisor at Sitra. The other members are, Olli-Pekka Heinonen (Director General, Finnish National Board of Education), Liisa Hyssälä (Senior Advisor, Sitra), Anna-Kaisa Ikonen (Chair of the City Council, Tampere), Kirsi Karlamaa (General Director, Finnish Communications Regulatory Authority), Mikko Kosonen (President, Sitra), Timo Laitinen (Director General, State Treasury), Teemu Malmi (Professor, Aalto University), Timo Reina (Deputy Managing Director, Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities), Matti Rihko (Chairman of the Board), Helena Tarkka (Director-General, Ministry of Finance), Astrid Thors (Master of Laws) and Ritva Viljanen (Mayor, city of Vantaa).

We also consult extensively with Finnish and international experts and various stakeholder groups, such as municipalities and local government representatives, youth organizations, the business sector, social partners and NGOs.

Where are we now?

The work began in August 2017. We will provide information on preliminary visions in summer 2018, and the actual discussion paper will be published in autumn 2018. The implementation plan for the paper will be completed in the beginning of 2019.

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Petri Virtanen

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Jouni Backman

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Kaisa Lähteenmäki-Smith