The State Treasury underwent an organisational change on 1 January 2002. The organisation of the State Treasury consisted of the divisions for administrative management, finance and insurance. In addition to this, internal support activities operated under the Director General. Thanks to successful operational activities at the State Treasury, the government enjoyed some significant benefits. Three of these were clearly above the rest: The first was the flexible adaptation to changes in the financial market, which resulted in a structural reorganisation of government debt to reduce the costs of servicing the debt. The second was the successful competitive tendering of the credit and debit cash flows of government transactions, which led to a change in the bank used for the transactions and a significant reduction in costs. The third major benefit was the fact that the retirement age of employees who were covered by the pension scheme continued to rise thanks to persistent development work.

In 2002, the establishment of the Insurance Division constituted a significant structural reform. In information technology, several system projects entered their implementation phase, including the lending system Laiho, the operative treasury system FinanceKit and the SiNetti intranet as well as the renewal of the website. These projects required significant efforts and yielded excellent results.

In 2002, the State Treasury implemented a new internal steering model whose core goal was to transfer steering from the group level to the division and unit level. The State Treasury steering model is based on the Balanced Score Card and quality assessment of operations and outcomes in keeping with the European EFQM indicators.

The Kaiku occupational safety and health programme for government agencies and institutions was put in place on 6 September 2002. Roughly half of government employees, i.e. approximately 60,000 people, were set to retire within the following decade. Not only did this mean that pension costs would soar, but that there would be fierce competition for skilled workers. The State Treasury occupational safety and health programme Kaiku was one of the measures that the central government implemented to tackle these challenges. By developing and supporting the activities related to occupational well-being, the programme aims at reducing the employees’ willingness to retire and increasing the attractiveness of government jobs.

Starting from the beginning of 2003, all the boards of directors of all agencies under the Ministry of Finance were terminated, and the agencies became purely monocratic offices, the State Treasury included. The change was implemented by changing the legislation that governs the State Treasury. Issues previously managed by the board of directors were transferred to the Director General, who has general authority to render decisions in the State Treasury.

In 2003, an advisory board to support the agency’s strategic planning was established in the State Treasury in accordance with the legislation on the State Treasury. The advisory board consists of the Director General and up to seven other members, one of whom is selected by the State Treasury personnel among themselves. The Ministry of Finance appoints the other members of the advisory board for a fixed term based on recommendations by the State Treasury. The members represent interest groups and customers of the State Treasury.

To support the administrative branch strategy of the Ministry of Finance, the State Treasury initiated a support activities productisation project on the central government level, which aims at broad and in-depth changes to operating methods in government agencies.

The expected wave of retirement during the following decade and the resulting competition for skilled workers and the simultaneous scarcity of financial resources set great expectations for the significant improvement of productivity and quality of all of the government operations. Expectations of developing the supporting activities for central government and improving productivity, in particular, were placed on the State Treasury. In 2003, the Administrative Management branch initiated a comprehensive development programme for government support activities that would last for many years and utilise networking, the Kieku programme. The Kieku programme would combine product development on a governmental level and support for the service centre projects of administrative branches in a way that would allow the central government financial and personnel administration to improve productivity and service capabilities through networking.

In 2004, the implementation of the pensions reform was the single most extensive and expensive task of the State Treasury. In order to achieve it, the VEL-2005 programme, which was divided into five projects, was established for the years 2004–2008. Its data systems investments would cost a total of 21 million euros.

To prepare for future challenges in management, the State Treasury initiated an extensive training programme by the name of Esikko for all supervisors and some experts. The programme ran until the summer of 2006. In 2004, the Finance and Administrative Management branches and some of the Combined functions moved into new, mainly open-plan offices in the ‘Ympyrätalo’ building in Hakaniemi.

The State Treasury prepared the establishing of the Shared Services Centre for Finance and HR. The practical implementation was prepared with previous State Treasury customers throughout the year. The first new customer joined the project in the beginning of November. The State Treasury Service Centre (VKPK) started as its own organisational unit on 1 January 2006. The development of financial and personnel administration processes was continued with a focus on supporting the initiation of the operations of the various service centres in the different administrative branches in 2006. The cost benefit tool developed in the Kieku programme was adopted in administrative branches. The Heli implementation project for the management system for the mobility of the employees in various administrative branches was introduced.

The greatest change in the central government’s debt management in 2005 was the inauguration of both a debt management model based on a benchmark portfolio and the related computation of profit and loss. This has had a profound effect on the nature of operations. The benchmark portfolio decided on by the Ministry of Finance specifies a strategic objective for the interest rate risk of budgetary debt. The debt management model based on a benchmark portfolio is re-evaluated annually. The year 2005 served as a trial period in the introduction of the benchmark portfolio.

The implementation of the reform of the pensions act continued. After the Council of State had resolved on 30 December 2004 that the extraordinary costs incurred due to the natural disaster in Asia would be compensated from central government funds insofar as they were not due to be paid by other parties, the State Treasury paid air carriers and travel organisers EUR 2.3 million in compensation for the costs of evacuation flights. In addition, the State Treasury paid compensation for the costs of transporting the deceased home, rescue and relief work, and medical care – and other such costs – to a total of about EUR 3 million.

The State Treasury set up a regional location in Hämeenlinna on 1 February 2005, initially to attend to pension service tasks. At the end of the year, a Pension Services office with 10 employees was up and running in Hämeenlinna. Towards the end of the year, two employees of the newly established State Treasury Service Centre were also stationed in Hämeenlinna.

The State Treasury 130 years. The group approach was in demand again  as it was 130 years ago when the State Treasury was founded to manage two dozen funds financing government expenditure. During the previous two decades, the decentralisation of internal administration had reached its peak and the time was ripe for centralisation again. This new trend of change reached all areas of internal administration and support services throughout central government. The role of the State Treasury was to act as a tool for the Ministry of Finance in guiding and supporting the production of basic financial and personnel administration services for the management of separate service centres.

The State Treasury Service Centre kept growing, and its customers already included 12 government organisations by the beginning of May. At this time, the service centre employed 28 people, three of whom worked in the Hämeenlinna office. The office in Pori was opened in the beginning of July at Valtakatu 15.

The Rehabilitation Foundation’s Board of Representatives awarded the 2006 Rehabilitator medal to the State Treasury’s Kaiku service programme. This was due to the success of the Kaiku services in developing all facets of occupational well-being. At the award ceremony, it was emphasised that the results had been impressive, whether judged from the viewpoint of disability statistics or attitudinal changes. The award was presented at the Valtakunnalliset Kuntoutuspäiviät (national rehabilitation conference) on 9 March 2006.

The profitability of the basic operations of the State Treasury was at its usual good level during 2007, keeping in line with previous years. The most important projects of the State Treasury on a state level, Kaiku, which develops occupational well-being and personnel risk management, and Kieku, the development and harmonisation project for central government finance and personnel administration processes, operating methods and data systems, progressed as planned during the year.

New expectations were put on the State Treasury and it was offered new tasks. In early 2007, the management of the State Treasury outlined the future of the agency, which resulted in the ‘State Treasury’s Future Sheet’ with specified corporate-level government activities that the State Treasury may be responsible for going forward. Some of these were already being implemented; the most important being the Valt-It service centre, whose practical implementation needed planning. The planning was initiated in the autumn of 2007 by assigning the State Treasury chief information officer to the task for a fixed term of little over a year.

“The renovations of the State Treasury head office on Sörnäisten Rantatie were completed early in the summer, and we were able to move into our renovated premises before Midsummer. In addition to technical improvements, the renovations brought an immense change to our work culture with the shift from single rooms to a communal open-plan office. From the individual employee’s viewpoint this was a big project, but aided by the good and participatory cultural reform project we have done pretty well also in this respect, in my opinion. The purpose of this reform is to make our internal activity even more open, creative and communal, with the aim of promoting our activity which is based on our values and carried out for the benefit of society and our customers – at the same time securing our own development and wellbeing,” said Director General Timo Laitinen in the 2008 Annual Report.

Throughout the year, the external operating environment was characterised by reformation projects in public administration, in nearly all of which the State Treasury plays some kind of an operative role.  The State Personnel Services Unit originated from the Finnish Government’s frame decision in spring 2008. Since then, we have been preparing to serve government units in matters pertaining to employee mobility. Our greatest single effort in 2008 was to start the building of a common financial and personnel administration information system to serve the entire budget state. This project reached far into the next decade and aimed at considerable improvement in quality and performance.

The State Treasury opened the Government IT Shared Service Centre on 1 January 2009. In 2009, the impacts of the global financial crisis were strongly felt in Finland as well, and they resulted in the deepest recession of the real economy in Finnish economic history. Conversely, the Finnish financial sector was spared from a crisis. The measures to correct the effects of the slump would take the whole of the decade. Unfortunately, the events of 2009 would be imprinted not only in economic history but also in history in general.

At the State Treasury, these effects manifested in two ways: the significantly increased deficit in the central government finances created added work at the State Treasury through increased government borrowing, and on the other hand the State Treasury as a government office – much like other offices and agencies – was faced with extremely stringent financial constraints in the next few years as the result of the tightening of the economic situation. During 2009, the government’s gross borrowing increased by EUR 12.8 billion and net borrowing by EUR 11.9  billion. At the close of the year, government debt was 37.2   per cent of the gross national product. Nevertheless, we were fortunate to be still a long way from the worst figures of the 1990s slump, when government debt peaked at 68 per cent of the gross national product. At the public administration level, all possible measures had already been initiated in order to close the so-called sustainability gap.

The State Treasury, Keva  and the Ministry of Finance successfully completed the preparations that began in 2008 for the transfer of pension executive services for individual clients from the State Treasury to Keva in 2010. The President signed the legislative changes concerning the transfer into law on 4 June 2010.

The activities of the Government IT Shared Service Centre (VIP) as a developer and producer of shared services  continued to increase. In 2010, the production of the first so-called spearhead projects began. VIP’s activities strengthened the argument that the adoption of a corporate model for ITC infrastructure was not only a sensible solution for central government, but also an effective way of organising the government’s information systems. Kieku, the State Treasury’s data processing system project, was completed. During the project, the approaches, processes and data structures of the government’s financial and personnel administration were standardised.

The State Treasury Service Centre (VKPK) merged with the Finnish Government Shared Services Centre for Finance and HR, which had started its operation on 1 January 2010. Along with the personnel and service operations, the entire network of regional offices of the State Treasury’s service centre was also moved to the service centre. The State Treasury had been building and maintaining the network since 2006.

On 21 May 2010, WWF awarded the State Treasury offices in Helsinki with permission to use the Green Office certificate. The certificate and the related diploma are awarded after a special application and assessment process to companies and communities with their own environmental programme that meets the Green Office criteria. The core targets of the environmental programme were to reduce energy and paper consumption and streamline the sorting of waste.