Finland is known as a welfare state, which has small income gap and good
ICT infrastructure. In recent decades, Finnish society has aimed to
transfer public administration through digital services. They are
nowadays available for different purposes including the social services
such as unemployment benefits or housing allowance. However,
digitalization have not yet expanded to all types of social services and
one area of development is the services for people with disabilities.
People with disabilities cannot be seen homogenous group of citizens;
instead it includes people in different ages, and having different
diagnoses. This study focuses only on one age group, the children, and
on one type of diagnosis, the autism spectrum. While the children are
the prime beneficiaries of the social services, their parents (or other
care givers) are the ones responsible for applying and transferring
these services to them. Hence, the unit of analysis in this study is the
parents of children on the autism spectrum. Interviews with them
represent the citizens’ viewpoint through which the digitalization of
social services is evaluated.