OREANDA-NEWS. October 11, 2011. ICT Service Centre for the Judicial Administration (OTTK) and Fujitsu Finland have signed an agreement whereby Fujitsu will implement an electronic services platform for the new Finnish e-participation environment. The agreement also covers the maintenance, support services and further development of the platform. Fujitsu will build the platform using Microsoft's SharePoint and Fujitsu's own NetCommunity solutions. The platform is scheduled to be up and running in March 2012.

The e-participation environment will offer citizens web-based services to express their opinions on issues in preparation, discuss them and bring up their views and topics in the political discussion, preparation and decision-making. The e-participation environment consists of a number of services of which the first to be implemented is the platform solution. In addition to the platform, the e-participation environment will be equipped with various electronic services, built through associated projects.

"The new service will allow all citizens to participate in current affairs regardless of time and place. People will have easier access to information and it will be easier to have an influence or impact on decision-making. Moreover, the authorities' preparatory work will be more efficient and it will involve more people. The transparency of decision-making and decisions will increase, and the contacts of citizens can be better targeted,” says project manager Mikko Levämäki from the Ministry of Justice, Finland.

The e-participation environment project is part of the eServices and eDemocracy Program (SADe), led by the Ministry of Finance. The programme aims to promote electronic services so that citizens and companies will have access to electronic services, covering all the key public administration services by the year 2013. The programme primarily focuses on developing customer-driven electronic services and their support services.