AI First – Sitra as a forerunner

The aim of the Artificial Intelligence First project is to make Sitra a pioneer in the utilisation of artificial intelligence in the public sector during 2026, and to support the rise of the whole of Finland as a leading country in the use of artificial intelligence by 2030. We will renew and optimise Sitra’s internal support services, develop Sitra’s external impact work with the help of artificial intelligence, and increase the competence and capabilities of our personnel as users of artificial intelligence. 

The work has three focus areas: 

• Development of internal support services: We are renewing Sitra’s internal processes and automating the manual steps of our work. For example, an AI agent answers Sitra employees’ most common employment-related questions about holidays, working hours, benefits, etc.   

• Increasing competence and capabilities: Continuous training of personnel and strengthening AI expertise.  

• Sharing lessons learned and solutions: We learn AI best practices from others and from each other. We share the solutions, operating models and lessons learned developed in our internal work with other Finnish organisations. 

In autumn 2025, we piloted several AI assistants in Sitra’s internal work. We have assembled a network of volunteers who test solutions before implementing them throughout the organisation. 

During the autumn, the project has worked on, among other things: 

• Waris, an artificial intelligence chatbot that uses content from our intranet and other developed AI helpers and, if necessary, directs the service request to the appropriate support team.
  
• A text assistant to support Sitra’s experts, which creates text with a tone suitable for external communications based on expert-written content.
  
• A training programme for the entire staff, with the help of which we aim to increase our own AI competence. 

In the future, the development of the quality of services and the increase of labour productivity will require new ways of thinking and the utilisation of technology. Artificial intelligence is not an end in itself, but a tool that can be used to achieve better results and streamline operations, both at Sitra and in other organisations. Change is both technical and cultural: it requires learning new things, a shift in mindset and responsible development. 

The utilisation of artificial intelligence enables better and more customer-oriented services, more efficient administration, the strengthening of networks producing new innovations, and the growth of Finland’s competitiveness. 

The implementation and development of the Artificial Intelligence First project includes: 

• Sitra’s own personnel and management, who are committed to the change and participate in the development work. The volunteer group act as testers, project motivators, and disseminators of proven practices within Sitra.
  
• Our Productivity for the Public Sector project: together with our partners, we accelerate a significant improvement in the productivity of Finland’s public sector.
  
• Numerous other partners from both the private and public sectors, with whom we share lessons learned and develop scalable solutions. 

Sitra’s goal is to build cooperation and share the developed solutions widely so that the benefits of artificial intelligence extend to the whole of society.