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Technology in society and politics

Lauri Lavanti sitting on a stool leaning against a tall table. He is wearing a black blazer and a blue-and-white floral shirt. In the blazer pocket is a multicoloured pocket square. A staircase in the background.

Finland has a strong tradition of technological competence. Maintaining that edge requires people with practical expertise at the table where policy decisions are made.

Most technology regulation is written by people who have never written code, deployed a system, or managed data at scale. When laws are drafted without that lived understanding, the result is rules that industry has effectively written for itself. I bring the perspective of someone who has built and run software systems professionally — and that shapes how I read proposed regulation.

Technology decisions are not isolated to a single policy area. They underlie education, privacy, democratic participation, public services, and economic competitiveness. A coherent technology policy requires connecting those threads rather than treating each in isolation.