Simple answers for complex problems: education and ICT in Finnish information society strategies

Following the information and communication technology (ICT) revolution, governments around the world have formulated strategies to meet the chal-lenges proposed by the ubiquitous globalization and information society dis-course. Education has been the focal point of information society strategies for two reasons. First, strategies have touted the use of ICT in enhancing education. Second, education is seen as a way to move nations into the information age. Finland, alongside other Nordic countries, has been soaring high in the inter-national ranking lists measuring different aspects of information society develop-ment (see e.g. World Economic Forum, 2005, 2006, 2007). Finland can be seen as a candidate for being a genuine information society. Furthermore, Finland’s recent success in the PISA survey (the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment) might suggest, if not causality, at least a correlation between information society development, education and the good PISA results. In this article Finnish strategy papers from 1999 to 2004 are analysed from three