The information society is the social formation in which the informational mode of development determines most of the uses and allocation of material, social and intellectual resources. The key aspects of this emerging society relate to global technocapitalism, social order of a networked society, postmodern culture and various dimensions of risk society. In this scene the public administration has a special relevance, both in promoting the creation of the information superhighway and in ensuring the implementation of social corrections to the inherent economic inequalities of technologically-based information economy. At the same time the nature of public administration seems to be changing: institutional boundaries are becoming increasingly irrelevant, organisations are becoming more flexible, public authorities possess more informational and learning capacities, and public services are more and more available in the net.

Since 1995 the formal institutional frame for Finland's national policy has been formed by the European Union. Finland and other Nordic countries have a fairly good record in their efforts to build an information society. The overall technical infrastructure is fairly good. At the end of 1990's more and more attention is paid to legitimizing this development by focussing on democracy, sustainable development and citizens' abilities to cope with the practices of information society.

As to the regional policy, one of the leading cases in Finland is PARADDIS, a project which aims at developing a democratic and economically well-developed 'informational region' in Western Finland. In addition, local authorities are profoundly involved in this process. Thus, Finland's way to information society is paved with substantial institutional support and relatively well-developed social and technical infrastructure together with firm commitment and involvement at regional and local levels. The following Finnish cases within the institutional settings at national, regional and local levels are introduced and discussed briefly in the presentation:

National level