Govt mulls automated decision-making to issue residence permit

The Ministry of the Interior has set up a legislative project to enable automated decision-making in the Finnish Immigration Service’s (Migri) activities, said the ministry in a press release on Thursday.

This would make it possible to resolve simpler matters as efficiently as possible.

Asylum applications, however, would not be processed by automated means, as they involve many issues that require overall consideration by a public official.

The Ministry of Justice is preparing general legislation on automated decision-making within public administration.

The Ministry of the Interior is now examining what kind of amendments should be made to the special legislation on migration to enable the Finnish Immigration Service to introduce automated decision-making in accordance with general legislation.

When decisions concerning individuals are made through automation, it is necessary to ensure their legal protection.

For example, clients of the Finnish Immigration Service must be able to request an administrative review of an automated decision concerning them free of charge.

Automation can help streamline the making of routine decisions and allocate staff specifically to tasks where an expert’s assessment is needed.

Automated decision-making by the Migri has been planned for a long time, and it was also brought up in the preparation of the act on migration authorities’ processing of personal data, which entered into force in 2020.

However, the proposal for automated individual decisions was abandoned because these legal issues should be resolved through general legislation.

The government proposal for general legislation on automated decision-making is due to be submitted to Parliament during the autumn session 2022.

The proposal for automated decision-making in the activities of the Migri is to be submitted to Parliament at the same time.

The Ministry of the Interior’s project will continue until 31 March 2023.

Currently, legislation does not yet enable fully automated decision-making. However, the Migri already has good experiences of semi-automation in the processing of residence permit applications and citizenship applications.

Semi-automation checks the fulfilment of the permit criteria and automatically formulates a proposal for a decision to be inspected and confirmed by the processor.

It has helped speed up the processing of applications for temporary protection submitted by Ukrainians, for example.