CSC statement on Finland’s Digital Compass
It is very welcome, and long awaited, that the national picture of digitalisation and the data economy be brought together along with setting targets and measures to support them. As highlighted in the draft, staying ahead of the competition in the new era of digital transformation and fostering our competitiveness require increased cooperation and the courage to make systematic changes to achieve long-term goals. It must be possible to utilize data for the benefit of society as a whole, to meet major societal challenges and to stand out and, at the same time, work together in Finland, at EU-level and globally. To do all this, we need to lead and guide strategic digitalisation. CSC supports this view and is happy to be part of building it.
The need for cooperation is well identified in the draft, which is also a prerequisite for the functioning of our innovation system. Cross-administrative and cross-sectoral co-operation is therefore of paramount importance in promoting digitalisation, which was also identified as a key factor in the Government’s decision-in-principle on technology policy. The draft also emphasized the need to strengthen the cooperation required by the entire innovation system, i.e. research-company cooperation. The global dimension could be highlighted even more, as Finland cannot keep up with the competition only through national and EU co-operation. We also need to look at the global context and find like-minded partners. For this, we need strong technology policy.
In CSC’s view, Finland’s future among the pioneers of digitalisation requires investment in sustainable development, innovations and the research that supports them sustainably and strategically over government terms. The current change in the operating environment – the current dual crisis – also requires an investment in researched knowledge to strengthen employment and the economy while increasing the resilience of the society. At the same time, critical technologies (high-performance computing, data, telecommunications and quantum) are becoming increasingly important, providing tools for understanding complex phenomena: pandemics, climate change, security policy, natural disasters, poverty, among others. In concrete terms, promoting digitalisation means processing analysed informatiom from data with the use of efficient infrastructures, the potential of which requires a new kind of horizontal approach and rethinking of structures and processes. CSC would like to see this thinking more strongly displayed in the next phase of Finland’s Digital Compass.
We are pleased that the draft highlights the LUMI supercomputer and, in this context, the energy consumption and waste heat utilisation of the data center. It is therefore important that, especially in these times, we clearly highlight Finland’s competitive advantages in achieving the EU’s climate goals through green data center operations.
You can read the statement in full here (pdf) (in Finnish).