Finland

Summary
Finland’s digital dependence increased significantly between 2010 (0.57) and 2023 (0.71), moving the country from the top ten least digitally dependent countries to 25th place in the DDI ranking. Patent reliance remained close to the maximum of 1.00, whereas a stark rise in platform dependency (from 0.80 in 2010 to 0.98 in 2023) marked a major shift. Coupled with an increase in ICT goods trade dependency (from 0.50 to 0.71, a growth of 21 percentage points) and, to a lesser extent, in ICT services (from 0.27 to 0.37), this contributed to an overall surge over the investigation period. Finland has been consistently more dependent on ICT goods from China (0.8 throughout the last decade) than those from the U.S. (shifting between 0.49 and 0.85).

Policies
While our research did not bring up a large variety of dependence-related policies between 2020 and 2026, Finland revised its “Cyber Security Strategy” and extended its goals to 2035. In 2020, the country appointed its first “National Cyber Security Director”, who coordinates the national cyber security management.