Finland (2017 updated 2019)
In October 2017, the Finnish Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment published its national AI strategy entitled Finland’s age of artificial intelligence (Finland, 2017). This report fits under the umbrella of a broader Artificial Intelligence Programme in Finland (also labelled as AI Finland) with a view to establishing AI and robotics as the cornerstones of success for Finnish companies. In 2018 the national AI strategy was complemented with a policy report on Work in the age of artificial intelligence (Finland, 2018). It is a thematic report that reflects on the impact of AI on labour market dynamics and skills requirements.
The strategy highlights Finland’s possibilities in the global market along with its strengths and weaknesses in AI. It describes how AI will transform society and provides a range of policy actions and recommendations for Finland to thrive in the age of AI. The goal was to position Finland as a leading country in AI. Finland has thereafter adopted an open data policy and aimed to create adequate conditions for a prosperous development of AI. Overall, the strategy strived to:
- Increase the competitiveness of business and industry.
- Dedicated new AI powered education and vocational education and training.
- Mobility between education programmes and participation in third-level studies.
- Lifelong learning system should be reformed “dramatically” integrating AI skills.
- Support labour mobility.
- Research programmes for developing and applying AI technologies.
- Provide high-quality public services and improve the efficiency of the public sector.
- Ensure a well-functioning society and wellbeing for its citizens.
- More funding for research and Innovation and innovation policy. 4% of GDP by 2030 should be the target.
In 2019 the Finnish Ministry of Economic Affairs released the final report of Finland’s Artificial Intelligence Programme, entitled Leading the way into the age of artificial intelligence (Finland, 2019). On pages 80-82 of this report, the Finnish Government provides investment figures for several flagship policies. For instance, the AI Business Programme has been allocated EUR 100 million over a four-year period. The Finnish Centre for Artificial Intelligence (FCAI) was granted EUR 8.3 million in flagship funding for 2019–2022.
In November 2020, Finland has launched an updated AI strategy: the Artificial Intelligence 4.0 Programme promotes the development and introduction of AI and other digital technologies in companies, with a special focus on SMEs from several industrial and service sectors.
Focus on AI in the public sector:
- AI-powered public services are crucial for the Finnish economy and welfare
- AuroraAI is the key action to change public services with AI with a life-events approach together with private sector partners
- Capacity of civil servants to work with AI needs to be strengthened
- Definition of strong ethical considerations for using AI in public services
- Creation of a sandbox to test AI solutions for the public interest
Sweden (2018)
In May 2018, the Swedish Government released its national AI strategy National approach for artificial intelligence (Sweden, 2018). This strategy points out the general direction for AI in Sweden in order to create a basis for future policy actions and priorities. In this sense, this strategy serves as a reference for the government to outline forthcoming policy initiatives with the aim to strengthen Sweden’s welfare and competitiveness by means of AI. To this purpose, the Swedish strategy focuses on the following priority areas:
- Education and training.
- Research.
- Innovation and use.
- Framework and infrastructure.
Prior to the release of the strategy, Vinnova – Sweden’s innovation agency – published an extensive policy report outlining the opportunities and challenges of AI in Sweden, and Sweden’s capabilities to embrace the full potential of AI (with concrete examples of ongoing AI projects). This section presents the policy recommendations of Sweden’s AI strategy. Where possible, it aims to incorporate new policy initiatives that have been rolled out since the launch of the strategy in May 2018. In terms of funding, Vinnova funded AI projects for SEK 675 million (approx. EUR 67.5 million) in 2020. The total sum for AI projects that Vinnova helped fund was SEK 1,350 billion (approx. EUR 135 million), 50% of this could be private founding or funding from other national programs. In the national budget for innovation and research until 2024 at least SEK 550 million (approx. EUR 55 million) has been assigned to research and innovation in digital technologies and AI and its use and impact on society.
Focus on AI in the public sector:
- AI must be used to make a more effective and relevant public sector.
- Active promote AI applications in public sector activities by making relevant data available.
- Public and private sector should cooperate to develop and manage together AI.
- Sweden needs pilot projects, testbeds and environments for development of AI applications in the public and private sectors.
- Use public sector data to train AI tools which could be used to develop new or improve existing public sector services.
Denmark (2019)
In March 2019, the Danish Government published its National AI strategy (Denmark, 2019). The Danish strategy sets out the goals and visions for AI development in Denmark, it presents the challenges to be addressed and it identifies specific policy initiatives and priority areas. It aims at putting Denmark at the forefront of responsible development of AI and sets out four objectives to achieve this goal:
- Develop a common ethical and human-centered basis for AI.
- Prioritize and support research and development of AI. I.e. both basic and applied research should be funded.
- Encourage the growth of Danish businesses by developing and using AI.
- Ensure that the public sector uses AI to offer world-class services for the benefit of citizens and society.
- Denmark should cooperate closely with other Nordic and European Countries on having a responsible use of AI.
- More public data in the cloud for AI for public authorities and research.
- More education and vocational training in AI.
The strategy originally contained 24 initiatives for which EUR 9.2 million has been reserved by the Danish Government for the period 2019-2027. The budget has since been reprioritized and lowered to EUR 5 million. The government plans to evaluate the strategy to determine future actions regarding AI.
In addition, the 2019 national budget earmarked EUR 39.5 million for research in new digital technologies. An additional EUR 26.8 million has been earmarked for an Investment Fund (2019-2022) to help municipal and regional government authorities develop and adopt digital welfare solutions and new technologies. Technological possibilities, such as AI, also play a role in the research funding established via the 2020 budget.
The outlined policy initiatives below also include those presented in the Strategy for Denmark’s digital growth (Denmark, 2018), a policy report setting the direction for how Denmark can seize the opportunities of the digital transformation. The report contains 38 initiatives, some of which relate directly to AI or provide initial policy steps that will push the development of AI technologies.
Focus on AI in the public sector:
- Public sector should use AI to offer world class services to citizens
- Create a responsible ethical and legal framework for use of AI in the public sector
- Improving data quality and quantity for AI
- Enhance the competencies on AI in the central government
- Allocation of funding to test and deploy new technologies
- Sharing of experiences of AI initiatives
- Signature projects in the public sector
- More Open Public-Sector data for AI.
Norway
The Norwegian Government presented its National AI strategy in January 2020 (Norway, 2020a). The objective of the strategy is to outline the policy actions for the coming years in order to maximize the opportunities that AI can bring along for Norwegian individuals, for businesses and industry, and for the public sector. To achieve this outcome, the national AI strategy highlights the following policy initiatives:
Expanding the offer of education programmes and workplace training in the field of AI to create a solid basis of digital skills and capabilities.
- Norway will lead the way to developing and using AI with respect for individual rights and freedoms. In Norway, AI will be based on ethical principles, respect for privacy and data protection and good cyber security.
- Strengthening the Norwegian research in AI (NORA, BigInsight, Industrial PhD etc.)
- Enhancing the innovation capacity in AI in both the private and public sector.
- Outlining ethical principles for AI to allow fair, reliable, and trustworthy AI-related developments.
- Establishing digitalization-friendly regulations to define the legislative framework in which AI developments take place.
- Constructing a strong data infrastructure ensuring open data and data sharing across sectors and business areas. Data lakes, data trust, synthetic data, anonymization interface, common open application programming interfaces are some of the method for storing and sharing data, mentioned in the strategy.
- Dedicated opportunities for language data resources are established through The Norwegian language bank at the National library.
- Deploying a telecommunication infrastructure that provides high-capacity connectivity and computing power, and that ensures security in AI-based systems as introduced in 2019 for the financial sector in Norway.
- Establishing regulatory sandboxes legislative amendments and to test specific parameters for new AI applications.
- Strong engagement in the EU programmes for Digital Europe and in Horizon Europe programmes where AI solutions are supported.
- Engage in Nordic cooperation though initiatives the Nordic Council of Ministers. Nordic cooperations is important, because we share the same interest and values with respect to AI.
While the national AI strategy mentions various provisions to finance specific projects, it does not provide the total amount of funding for the implementation of the strategy.
Focus on AI in the public sector:
- Strategy aims to support value creation and use of AI in the public sector
- Facilitate the sharing of public sector data among public sector agencies through a national resource centre for data sharing.
- Legal barriers to public sector AI will be reviewed and updated, in particular issues regarding data protection and statutory authority
- All AI used in the government have to be transparent and explainable
- Guidelines will be made available to help public administrations overcome uncertainties
- Public procurement can be an instrument to adopt AI in Norwegian public administrations. Innovation partnerships and innovative procurement may be good tools for this.
Main topics in the European National Strategies when addressing the needs and services of the public sector (National, Regional and Local Administration) according to an AI Watch 2022 study
