Photo by Pihla Liukkonen / City of Mikkeli
Toni Ryynänen & Anni Tuomaala, Ruralia Institute
ERNACT led and Interreg NPA funded INNOCAP project partner Ruralia Institute (University of Helsinki) continues interviewing municipal decision-makers in South Savo region, Finland. Among other things, the interviews clarify, how the representatives of municipalities define the twin or digital and green transition in their own words and how they understand the transitions from their perspectives.
“Although both are very well-known, green transition seems to be more familiar of the twins among the municipal decision-makers” concludes Toni Ryynänen, Senior Researcher of the Ruralia Institute and INNOCAP partner.
The current 11 municipalities of South Savo region have detailed climate programmes making the green transition topic timely. In addition, green transition indicators such as the energy consumption of public sector real estate are based on robust measurement methods or are rather concrete such as the number of electric cars charging stations.
“Certain aspects of digital transition such as high-speed broadband and 4G/5G connections are frequently mentioned during the interviews. More abstract indicators such as usage of cloud services or artificial intelligence seem to be clearly harder to locate geographically or link to development activities of a municipality” adds the Doctoral Researcher Anni Tuomaala from the Ruralia Institute.
The municipal decision-makers tend to perceive the digital transition activities as practical tools to achieve beneficial goals such as efficiency improvements via digitalising the administrative document management or extending the availability of public sector services. Clever digital solutions can also improve environmental sustainability: digital transition could be used in leveraging green transition activities in the future.
Ruralia Institute aims at launching a digital service that shows spatial green transition indicators on a map and allows making comparisons in the South Savo region during the spring 2025.