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The future benefits will include better services, less manual work and up-to-date information for different authorities. The higher education institutions will jointly determine the purposes for which the data platform can be used.
The work on the higher education institutions’ joint data platform is well under way. The platform will be rolled out stepwise in late 2026, and in the initial phase, higher education institutions will be able to upload information on their study options to the platform.
“We are approaching an exciting new phase, as we are now laying the foundation for numerous new services in addition to Opin.fi,” says Jonna Piiroinen, Project Director of Digivisio.
The data platform will for the first time gather Finnish higher education institutions’ study options and study attainments into a single service. This solution is unusual, even by European standards, and will create many benefits for Finland.
In the future, services that make learners’ lives easier can be built on the platform and the data it contains. The platform will additionally streamline data transfers to the authorities and provide entire society a window to what is happening in the higher education sector. Universities and universities of applied sciences can use it to focus on their core tasks and consequently also achieve cost savings.
“The aim is at a smarter way of doing things, reducing manual work and supporting seamless data flows,” says Piiroinen.
A large group of stakeholders involved in the development
The platform built by Digivisio will be maintained by HigherEd Hub Finland. The project was outlined in joint discussions between the higher education institutions. Stakeholders, including developers of study information systems and different authorities, are additionally consulted during the development work.
“Broad-based consultation of different stakeholders and their participation in the planning process help to ensure that the platform will serve a wide range of purposes,” says Sakari Heikkilä, Project Manager responsible for technical development in Digivisio.
The efforts to develop the data platform that have been going on for some time have focused on the continuous learning service, Opin.fi, but now the platform will start serving society in a wider sense. Initially, it will replace Virta service, which has reached the end of its road. Virta was a data warehouse for study attainments and other information relating to students needed by the authorities. Going forward, the platform will be used by a large number of public administration actors from Kela to the Finnish Immigration Service and from the Finnish Student Health Service to the Ministry of Education and Culture.
“Up-to-date information concerning learners and education will serve different authorities extensively and contribute to securing the right to various benefits,” Heikkilä says.
The use of the platform will be expanded gradually in 2027–2028. The first step will be using it to transfer information on open studies to Studyinfo and Competency Path services in late 2026.
Teachers play a key role in ensuring data quality
The new platform will not bring about dramatic changes in the daily life of teachers and study administration. They will continue to use the familiar systems, Sisu and Peppi, as the platform taps the data stored in these systems.
The good news is that the need to manually update and correct study information will be reduced. However, it is important to pay attention to the consistency of the data imported to the platform. This is why the higher education institutions have drawn up joint guidelines, for example on describing competence acquired through studies.
“Teachers and the study administration play a really important role in ensuring high data quality on the platform,” Piiroinen says.
Learners will see the introduction of the platform as smoother everyday life: taking courses in other higher education institutions besides your own will be easier, and the platform will offer a handy way of comparing study options. This way, the platform will support student mobility in Finland.
Fascinating opportunities for companies, too
Yet new services can be built on top of the platform later. They may include AI recommendations on what learners should study next, or analysis tools for higher education institutions that help them make knowledge-based decisions.
Exchange studies and the creation of the European Higher Education Area can also be promoted by facilitating the transfer of study information from one country to another.
“The platform is like a flower bed, while the different services are flowers springing up in it,” Heikkilä explains.
There will also be interesting opportunities for businesses. For example, recruitment companies could build services on the platform that would help learners find jobs – of course, always allowing the learner to decide if their data can be disclosed to third parties. However, common policies will be needed to use the platform for such purposes.
“All these are things that the higher education institutions must agree on,” Heikkilä says.
Discussions on developing the data platform further will be conducted in 2026 and 2027 as the Digivisio project plans its third phase.