Читать книгу Digital Government Excellence - Siim Sikkut - Страница 69

Anna-Maija Karjalainen was the Director General in the Ministry of Finance of Finland for over seven years. Her responsibility area was the public sector ICT and digitalization, including the digital security.

Before joining the Ministry of Finance, she worked for five years as the divisional director in the State Treasury of Finland, leading the shared service center for state ICT services.

Prior to these governmental tasks she worked more than twenty years in the private sector leading ICT in international companies in the metal and paper industries.

She holds a master of science degree in engineering.

Maija was by far the closest colleague I had in the global digital government leaders' circuit. Part of it is because of the special relationship between our governments, which extended to the digital government sphere and took us to lead some internationally novel efforts. This included cofounding NIIS, the world's first intergovernmental govtech infrastructure consortium, to jointly develop the core technology of X-Road.

But we got close also because of our styles match. Maija is always very pragmatic, straight-shooting, no time wasting—but also always happy to have a good laugh and some fun, when the occasion is right.

Whichever international meeting she took part in, she always spoke out actively to share what they were doing in Finland, and she made her country noticed for the progress going on. She must be one of the most outspoken Finns there is, knowing the national stereotype of Finns as the most reserved folks on this earth!

It was not just talk that got others' attention, as you see from this chapter. Maija steered the Finnish public sector to a real turnaround in how it was delivering on digital government.

—SIIM