If you are not Finnish citizen, but live permanently in Turku or elsewhere in Finland Proper, you can probably vote in the 2022 county elections. You definitely should vote.
These elections are crucial for everyone in Finland, as they will determine just how our health services are organized in the next few decades. Health services in Finland used to be organized by 309 municipalities in a scattered way; now they will be organized by 23 counties in a centralized way (I discuss this in more detail in Finnish here). The change is huge, and it requires a deep understanding of administrative and organizational issues. Boring? Yes. Important? Crucially so.
I am a candidate for the Greens, with campaign number 172. On pretty much every crucial issue, I agree with the Green’s election manifesto, which you can read here. The three central issues are:
- Equality: We must guarantee that everyone has access to sufficiently good services, even if it is not possible to guarantee identical services everywhere. To me, this will require massive digitalization.
- Prevention and effectiveness: we need to focus on solving problems before they even become problems.
- Social responsibility: Work conditions in the health sector need to be better than now. Even more important than raising salaries is organizing the work so that it does not burn people out.
However, I approach these issues like an engineer, from a practical perspective. The targets are good, but we need to be able to achieve them in real life. How do we achieve this? By understanding how complex systems work, and working in a disciplined and organized way. To me, this organizational change is fundamentally about the way our health data will be organized. Councillors will above all need to understand how data flows, and how data should flow.
From this perspective, I do not have wild expectations about this change. The IT systems in healthcare are an unbelievable spaghetti, and nothing much will be achieved until they are organized better. Right now, no one really knows how the systems as a whole work, which means that no one really knows how they could be improved.
That is why I have set a very pragmatic target for the organizational change during the 2022-2025 council period. The council must make sure that all salaries are paid, and no one dies or is harmed by the change. Anything else is a bonus. If this is kept as the top priority, then future councils can actually start improving the system. It is the job of this first council to set guidelines for how those changes should be made.
This may sound almost cold-blooded, but I believe that is necessary sometimes. I am a 49-year-old physics PhD from Turku, and am currently working as a data scientist in an IT consulting company. My philosophy is extremely simple: I believe logic and science should be followed in all decisions that are made for the common good. All decisions should be fact-based and analytical. This kind of attitude is very common indeed among today’s Greens in Finland.
When it comes to values I am a fairly traditional reddish-green hippie. The weak must be protected, discrimination must be eliminated, and nature needs to be respected and nurtured. When it comes to thought processes, I am an unyieldingly analytical hippie. You simply cannot achieve good things if you are undisciplined and illogical.
I consider science and technology to be the only way to solve the world’s challenges, whether they are related to huge issues like climate change or smaller issues like the health-care change of 2022. To me this change is necessary and crucial, and should have been done a decade ago. Unfortunately it is now being done at breakneck speed with almost no planning, and that means there are huge risks involved.
But: we will be able to handle the risks, as long as we keep calm and do science. As long as major decisions are only made when we have sufficient understanding and good enough data, we can handle this.
Blog posts in Finnish: try the Google Translate button on these
Most of my blog posts are unfortunately only in Finnish. However, I have enabled the Google Translate button on my site. Try it out. In maybe ten years, I expect translation technologies to work flawlessly. In 2022, the translations are still… surrealistically bad.
21.1.2022 Maalaisjärki vai perehtyminen? The council deals with incredibly complex issues, and using just common sense can be dangerous. We show via a case study that even a simple question (should schoolchildren have three health checks, or four) turns out to be so complex that it is impossible to answer without more research.
12.1.2022 Hyvinvointia hankinnoilla, osa 2: Resepti hyviin hankintoihin. I summarize what a county concillor should understand about public procurements (buying goods and services for the health sector).
10.1.2022 Hyvinvointia hankinnoilla, osa 1: miksi hankinnoilla on väliä. The hospital district spends over 40% of its budget on buying goods and services. I describe why it is crucial for councillors to understand these processes.
9.1.2022. Ankaruus ja empatia. Usually, candidates that win elections do so by being empathetic and approachable. Even so, I think it is important to understand that these elections are all about processes and bureaucracy, less about empathy.
5.1.2022 Voiko vaalikoneisiin luottaa? Voting aid applications have become so popular that they are starting to exert quiet but real political power. I estimated the performance of there applications by repeating the tests 18 times, actively forgetting between trials what points I had given earlier. I found that even tiny differences in points can lead to very large variations in who gets the top position — in fact, I got myself as the top hit in only 75% of trials. In one application I was classed as left-wing, in another as right-wing. Voting aids are useful, but the text-based answers are more important than the percentages.
3.1.2022 Organization and imagination: Reforming our health services. ´“There is one word which I have almost never seen mentioned when someone speaks about healthcare reform: imagination. In 2022, the Finnish healthcare system will undergo the most massive changes in it history. Huge changes in digital services will be made. Yet very few people seem to think about innovative things that could be done.” I propose two fairly innovative ideas.
9.12.2021 Hyvinvointialueiden kauneus: neliulotteisesta shakista kolmiulotteiseen. The county elections have been criticized quite a bit. Some of the criticism is valid, but overall the elections will be a huge improvement over the present state. Currently, healthcare operates in a fuzzy 618-dimensional matrix. After the reform, we will only have 23 organizations to do the same things. The reform will almost definitely improve democracy and transparency.
21.11.2021: Piirihallituksen ihanuus ja kurjuus. Olen vuosina 2022-2023 Varsinais-Suomen Vihreiden piirihallituksen jäsen. Täällä hahmotan, miksi Varsinais-Suomi on niin haastava alue.
11.11.2021: Aluevaalit ovat numeroita ja etiikkaa. [Mielipidekirjoitus Turun Sanomissa]. Sote-uudistus on todennäköisesti Suomen rauhan ajan massiivisin organisaatiomuutos, ja koskettaa jokaista suomalaista. Siihen nähden siitä puhutaan edelleen yllättävän vähän, vaikka aluevaaleihin on alle kolme kuukautta. Erityisesti kaikkein syvällisimmistä kysymyksistä näkyy vain vähän keskustelua. Vaalien syvällisin kysymys kuuluu: mitä tarkoittaa oikeudenmukaisuus, ja miten sitä voidaan mitata?
24.9.2021: Datanörtti ehdolla aluevaltuustoon. Olen ehdolla aluevaltuustoon, Vihreänä Varsinais-Suomessa. En siksi että kokisin olevani selkeästi pätevin ehdokas — faktat eivät sellaista väitettä tue. Mutta uskon kyllä olevani tuhannen pätevimmän varsinais-suomalaisen joukossa. Ja kun ehdokkaita kaiken kaikkiaan tulee olemaan yli viisisataa, niin tilastollisesti katsoen uskon olevani oikeassa seurassa ainakin 50% todennäköisyydellä.
20,9.2021: Aktiivisen fatalismin ytimessä: Tutustuminen aluepelastukseen. En ole vielä perehtynyt siihen, millaista pelastustoimi on kenttätasolla, mutta päällikkötason elämänasenne vaikuttaa vetoavalta. Ihan täydellistä termiä en löydä, mutta “aktiivinen fatalismi” on aika lähellä. Maailmassa tapahtuu kamalia asioita, mutta kaikesta selvitään — kunhan suunnitellaan kunnolla eikä hätkähdetä pienistä. Se on varmasti välttämätön asenne juuri tuossa ammatissa jotta paineet voisi kestää, mutta siihen olisi kyllä hienoa pyrkiä omassakin elämässä.
17.5.2021: Kuka on todellinen suomalainen? Pääsin näkemään läheltä, millaista rasistista vyörytystä ulkomaalaistaustaiset ehdokkaat joutuvat kestämään. Pohdin suomalaisuutta, ja päädyin siihen että neljä ehtoa riittää. Henkilö on suomalainen, jos hän 1) Asuu Suomessa. 2) Haluaa asua Suomessa jatkossakin, ja osallistua suomalaiseen yhteiskuntaan parhaansa mukaan. 3) Haluaa opetella suomen kielen niin hyvin, että pärjää täällä. 4) Hyväksyy tärkeimmät suomalaiset perusarvot kuten tasa-arvo, syrjimättömyys, ja erimielisten kunnioittaminen.
17.5.2021. Who is a real Finn? I watched as non-native fellow candidates faced racist online attacks, and started to think about just who is a Finn. I decided that a Finn is anyone who 1) Lives in Finland. 2) Wants to live in Finland in the future, and to participate in our society. 3) Wants to learn Finnish well enough to manage life here. 4) Accepts the most important Finnish values: equality, lack of discrimination, respect for those who disagree.
4.3.2021: Onko “tiedolla johdettu kaupunki vain sanahelinää?” “Tiedolla johtaminen” on suosittu sana, mutta onko se kuntien tapauksessa vain bullshit-bingon voittorivin elementti? Ehkä, muttei todellakaan täysin. [Kirjoitus on tehty 2021 kuntavaaleihin, mutta toimii myös aluevaaleissa]
12.2.2020: Mielipide: Vastuullinen huumepolitiikka perustuu tutkittuun tietoon. “Voidaan hyvin olla sitä mieltä, että huumausaineiden käyttö on erittäin kyseenalaista toimintaa. Se ei kuitenkaan ratkaisevasti poikkea muista erittäin kyseenalaisista asioista, joita ihmiset tekevät. Huumeongelmia ei ratkaista lisäämällä sokeasti rangaistuksia vaan puuttumalla tehokkaasti ongelmiin, kun niitä ilmaantuu.”