The most important tasks for future municipalities may be summarised as development, education, and planning. This is what we state at our study Municipalities as places for activities ordered by the Ministry of Finance in Finland. In the future, the development and decision-making in municipalities will be based on active discussion between decision-makers, experts and the citizens. Municipalities will open as platforms for development. More attention will be put in activating various stakeholders, which means how citizens, communities, associations, and companies may take actively part in the future-making processes within municipalities. There’s also a need for an upheaval in the municipal sector – novel thinking, experiments, and operation models are widely needed. The future success of municipalities relies on the operative culture, not the forms of organising. Our study is linked with the Finnish government’s reform Future municipality. The findings of the study are based on a large-scale survey aimed at the municipal representatives and leading civil servants in the Finnish municipalities (11292 receivers, 3505 respondents), expert interviews and focus group discussions in with seven municipalities.
For more information, please see our project site (in Finnish).