Interoperable and better digital services in financial data

Use of digital financial data can ease the administrative burden of businesses and the everyday life of people as well as provide opportunities for innovative service development. "Movement of financial data in support of business operations calls for data consistency. The recently completed TALTIO project has been very successful in this," said Minister of Transport and Communications Anne Berner in the closing seminar of the TALTIO project on 3 November 2017.

Within the TALTIO project, standards have been developed to harmonise the format of financial data and to build interoperability between the parties involved. One example is converting accounting material, such as invoices, account statements and receipts, into a standardised and computer-readable format to enable data portability.

"However, standardisation and technical interoperability of financial data is not enough. We need to get the companies to apply the models in their own financial administration processes, and the providers of programming and financial administration services to develop even better solutions for their customers," says Minister of Transport and Communications Anne Berner.

"Through its versatility and international standards, financial data plays a special role in promoting data-based business in Finland, and also in cross-border data economy. For example, the idea in the EU initiative on data economy is to remove restrictions to free movement of data in the internal market and to increase the availability and portability of data - in this area Finland has a lot to offer due to the development work we have done."

The TALTIO project was coordinated by the accountant federation Taloushallintoliitto and the Ministry of Transport and Communications together. The work will continue within the RTECO (digital real-time economy) project, in which the results achieved in TALTIO are translated into practical solutions for businesses, organisations and their ecosystem networks.

"In the Ministry, we will continue the work by encouraging stakeholders in our own sector to take interoperable data solutions of digital economy into use and participate in network cooperation of the RTECO project that is to continue the work by TALTIO," Minister Berner says.

TALTIO was part of the Government key project on building a growth environment for digital business.