Finland

Systems thinking in a time of crisis. In conversation with SITRA Lab’s Mikael Seppälä

Leave a Comment / Finland, governance, knowledge system, systems thinking /

As of today, there are more than 2.17 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 globally. The pandemic has spread at an unprecedented speed to more than 190 countries around the world. By the end of March 2020, over 180 countries had closed down their schools. Governments are taking action around the world to manage school closures, […]

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Governments and governance in the digital revolution: opportunities and challenges. In conversation with Johannes Mikkonen

Leave a Comment / 4IR, Finland, governance, systems thinking, technology /

At the end of last year, with support from Helvetas I co-authored a paper entitled, State Capability, Policymaking and the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Do Knowledge Systems Matter?

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First impressions from a week of distance learning in Finland. In conversation with my daughters

1 Comment / education, Finland /

This week I read this article on EdTech published in the Guardian which asked Can computers ever replace the classroom?  Here in Finland due to the coronavirus pandemic only a few schools remain open  and the question is no longer whether computers can replace the classroom, during these weeks they have to. So, I talked

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Reference societies and adaptive development: a conversation with Daniel Suryadarma about Indonesia’s participation in the PISA educational assessment

Leave a Comment / adaptdev, decentralisation, demand for evidence, development, development partners, doing development differently, education, evidence-informed policy, Finland, governance, Indonesia, policy, policy research, research /

During a seminar organised by the EduKnow research group at the University of Tampere on comparative education, I came across the interesting concept of reference society. In a nutshell, countries which, like Finland, find themselves at the top of the PISA ranking may become models or references for countries looking for ways to improve their education policies

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Adaptive programming at scale: a discussion at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland

1 Comment / adaptdev, development partners, doing development differently, Finland, project /

I was in Helsinki last week for a presentation and discussion at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. This was part of the yearly Studia Generalia, a series of seminars organised by the Ministry and the Finnish Society for Development Research where researchers have the opportunity to meet staff of the Ministry and discuss various aspects

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A conversation about policy experiments

Leave a Comment / adaptdev, adaptive development, complexity, demand for evidence, development partners, doing development differently, evidence-informed policy, Finland, governance, knowledge management, monitoring evaluation, monitoring evaluation learning, PDIA, policy research, think tank /

The search for ways to design policies that help to solve societal problems is continuously evolving. The traditional evidence-based approach to policy making involves generating research results and using these to inform policy decisions. This blog post is based on an interview with Mikko Annala, Head of Governance Innovation at Demos Helsinki. It was originally posted on

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Flag of Finland. Photo: Sepi V (CC BY 2.0)

Making research evidence count: insights from Finland’s Policy Analysis Unit

Leave a Comment / demand for evidence, evidence-informed policy, Finland, research /

After more than a decade in Asia working to build governments’ use of evidence, I recently moved back to Finland. Here I’ve found commitment to evidence and innovation like nowhere else. Kokeileva Suomi or Experimental Finland is a great example of the nation’s ‘readiness to innovate’. Set up by Prime Minister Juha Sipilä in 2015, it tests policies

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First impressions from entering the best school system in the world

2 Comments / data innovation, democracy, education, Finland, Scandinavia /

In June this year my family and I moved back to Europe after spending more than 10 years in Southeast Asia. We decided for various reason to move back to Finland. We have family and relatives here and one of the factors that brought us back was to be closer to the family. A second

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