AI and the Historical Layers of Public Administration: Who Dares Dismantle the Past?

When we look at Finnish society and its administrative structures, we tend to see them as static and unchanging. But on a recent Puheenaihe podcast, Aleksi Koppo from the Ministry of Finance painted a more nuanced picture: every layer of our public administration carries the fingerprints of the era that created it.

The legacy reaches deep. Procurement processes were designed for a paper-and-fax age. Information systems date from the 1990s and 2000s, when AI-assisted services were science fiction. Many decision-making structures still mirror the corporate models of the 1980s.

Why this matters now

AI gives us a once-in-a-generation chance to redesign these layers. But it requires more than tools — it requires the courage to dismantle what no longer serves us. The technical capability is here. The political and organizational will is the real bottleneck.

The countries that lead in AI-enabled government will not be the ones with the biggest budgets. They will be the ones brave enough to look at their own historical layers and ask: “Why are we still doing it this way?”

Read the original Finnish article at /fi/.