Finland’s economy needs to keep working through the AI transition. That means new companies, new jobs, and public services that actually use the technology rather than just buy it in from outside. Without serious technology competence in parliament, decisions about AI procurement, data infrastructure, and labour policy are made by people who don’t know what they are buying.
I write about the economy through the lens of what I have done for over a decade: built software and software teams across different industries. AI changes the basis of work, competitiveness and public services. Finland can lead this shift, but only if public investment is targeted at domestic capability in a way that actually understands what is being done.
A working economy in the AI era is not just a slogan. It is substance: skills that survive the transition, businesses that can build on Finnish and European infrastructure, and a state that procures technology on its own terms.
Start here
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Who owns public sector data?
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AI changes what developers get paid for
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Data Centres Can Be Finland's Ace in International Politics
A leaked US cable exposed lobbying against data sovereignty. Data centres can be Finland’s ace in international politics, if we build them on our own terms.
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Frequently asked questions
How does AI change work?
AI does not replace experts, but it changes what they get paid for. Software is the first industry where this shows: according to Professor Pekka Abrahamsson of Tampere University, AI does in two minutes what used to take a developer two weeks. Routine production is automated, while decision-making, recognising context and bearing responsibility grow in value. Every field with repetitive knowledge work faces the same structural change, and Finland still has no coordinated answer on reskilling or safety nets.
Why does vendor lock-in cost taxpayers so much?
When a public system is locked inside one supplier’s closed solution, the price stops being set by the market. The supplier knows the customer cannot leave, and the negotiating power shifts to the supplier for good. The fix is portability: publicly documented data formats, well-known interface standards and an exit clause written into the contract. The Procurement Act should require portability for critical systems from the call for tenders onwards, with open source as their default.
What does Finland gain from data centres?
An ecosystem can be built around data centres, as once around Nokia: network infrastructure, industrial premises, cooling and power distribution solutions, and on top of them software and research work. Then a significant share of the value stays in Finland as wages, tax revenue, jobs and expertise. Data centres are also foreign policy, because physical location determines whose rules a service operates under. That is why they should be built on Finland’s terms, without any new subsidy scheme.