The grass is greener...

When I set off in mid-May to do my overseas benchmarking fieldwork in Helsinki, I was fully expecting the Finns to have sorted out all the e-government stuff to a very advanced degree, based on their reputation. I expected there to be channel management strategies, refined systems of monitoring customer contacts, and above all a single window citizen-centric portal for all council services. The information society experience on the ground certainly is pretty advanced, as confirmed by the undersigned: mobile broadband, wireless hotspots, free cable modems from the library, funky walk-in centres in regeneration areas for anyone to use - no registration required.

In addition, Helsinki's current ICT strategy is a superb document, I could not have written a more comprehensive one myself. So, what's wrong? Erm, well, the vision of an all-singing, all-dancing e-service environment is thought be a reality in 2015. Yep, some 10 years later than I would have expected.

Thus the overall story from Helsinki for me is one of bewilderment mingled with disappointment. I couldn't stop myself in the subsequent interviews from trying to ascertain what on earth went wrong, as if there was some huge failure on the Council's part to have delivered more in the decade after I had left the country for England. That expectation ofcourse was mainly in my head, but most interviewees admitted that Finland had, overall, experienced an alarming period of stagnation in the past decade or so. Favourable economic trends and steady growth don't make a good environment for Finns to flourish, apparently. They need to struggle, hardship is required to bring out the best in Finns! Good news then for my compatriots, the world economy is in turmoil thanks to the much written about credit crunch in America, rocketing fuel prices etc. - there are certainly challenging times ahead for Little Finland too.

The other surprise was that I found such deep-rooted silos in the administration of Helsinki that I think they even surpass those in Manchester. "Maybe good hierarchy is better than a series of teethless partnerships" Nicola suggested on my first day back in Manchester. There's food for thought, the "system" does seem to work remarkably well in Helsinki - services are generally well-run, at least they keep raving about it in the press, the formidable "Nordic welfare model".

But is it really so great as they all think?

They may take away my passport for expressing anti-patriotic sentiments, but I do think the "system" that is the welfare model is heading towards a crisis in Finland anyway. It is perhaps based on an out-dated model of a homogenous society where everyone sings from the same hymn sheet, but that is increasingly not the case in Finland, as it is not the case anywhere else in Europe. Am I going to be the first academic to predict the demise of the Nordic welfare system? What a shock it would be to the entire leftie-liberal world who hail countries like Finland and Sweden as their ultimate progressive safe havens.

One or two interviewees, whose names I shall not mention here, admitted that they have come across some exaggerated ideas about the Finnish public sector during their travels. One even admitted that some policies have been borrowed from elsewhere in Europe - shock & horror! In the same time those who had had some exposure to UK policies and/or familiarised with Manchester's digital development, seemed to have an exceedingly positive image of what it is like over here. I didn't have the heart to tell them that they would be surprised if they scratched the surface, as much as I had been having scratched the surface in Helsinki.

I draw two important lessons from my comparative study:

1) Reputation, it appears, is not always built on hard facts.

2) Apparently, for public sector workers, the grass is always greener on the other side.

Let's not tell that to all those buraucrats in Brussels dishing out money for civil servants across Europe to travel to exotic places to learn how things are done "better" elsewhere.

Viva study visits!