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Finland: Infopankki

http://www.infopankki.fi is a multilingual web service that provides reliable information to immigrants in many languages. Infopankki covers topics ranging from moving to Finland, working, studying and living in Finland to education, health, family, problem situations and leisure time.

Project Goal

The main objective of Infopankki is to provide accurate information for immigrants about Finnish society. The information is specifically adapted to newcomers’ needs and gives the users opportunities to contact the appropriate authorities or agents.

Content of Infopankki is mainly directed at early-stage immigrants. The text is written in plain language that is easy for people with basic education and internet skills to understand. Equality, equal opportunity and participation have been considered in all content.

Who benefits

The main target groups of Infopankki are immigrants living in Finland, authorities providing services to immigrants and foreigners planning to move to Finland.

How it works

Infopankki’s content is divided in three main themes: Moving to Finland, Living in Finland and Information about Finland.

The "Living in Finland" theme is further divided in nine sections: As an immigrant in Finland, Work and enterprise, Finnish and Swedish, Housing, Education, Health, Family, Problem situations and Leisure. There is also content based on different situations of life: Employee or entrepreneur, Student, Refugee, Asylum seeker, Returnee and Family member.
Infopankki’s service languages include Finnish, Swedish, English, Russian, Estonian, French, Somali, Spanish, Turkish, Chinese, Persian and Arabic. The information contained in the different language versions is identical. There are about 300 content pages per language version.

Besides general information about Finland, Infopankki also provides information about those Finnish municipalities that are members of Infopankki. Infopankki member municipalities are: Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa, Kauniainen, Turku, Tampere, Mikkeli, Kokkola, Ylivieska region, Raahe-Kalajoki region, Oulu and Rovaniemi.
The site contains many external links to websites maintained by different authorities and organisations

Infopankki website is maintained by the City of Helsinki. The Infopankki editorial team is responsible for updating the sections Moving to Finland, Living in Finland and Information about Finland, as well as information regarding the municipalities of Helsinki, Espoo, Vantaa and Kauniainen. The editorial teams of the other Infopankki member municipalities maintain their own municipal pages.

A translations agency is responsible for the translation of Infopankki content into all Infopankki service languages.

The content is produced in co-operation with authorities, NGOs, municipal service counsellors and users. Content is constantly updated and developed, each content section has its own editorial staff member in charge of its content

The Finnish and Swedish language course search Finnishcourses.fi is a part of the Infopankki service.

Results

The website received 869 607 visits in 2014. 55% of the visits came outside of Finland. The most popular sites were Coming to Finland as a refugee or an asylum seeker, Finnish online and Coming to work in Finland. The most popular languages were Finnish, English, Russian, Arabic, Persian and Estonia.

Evaluation

According to a user survey conducted in November 2014, about 80 % of Infopankki users are happy with the service. 70 % of respondents found that Infopankki has enough information and almost 90 % had found the information they were looking for from Infopankki. Most respondents also found Infopankki to be well-structured, understandable and easy to use.

The survey also showed that improvements could be made regarding the visibility and accessibility of the municipal pages, the text size on the content pages, the targeting of content and the promotion of the service.

Funding and resources

Infopankki is financed by the Finnish government and Infopankki member municipalities.

About this good practice

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Posted by
Dirk Gebhardt
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