Last year, Norrköping municipality had around 140 pages of information in Finnish on its website, according to an official. At the end of last year, all but one of these Finnish-language pages were removed as part of a larger change effort on the website, the official said. The removal included a collection page where the municipality previously informed Swedish-Finnish residents about events, activities, and so-called dialogue meetings, where the minority can participate in the municipality's decision-making and express themselves on matters that concern them. Pascal Tshibanda started as the municipality's new communications chief a few weeks ago, the official confirmed. He learned about what happened when SVT Uutiset contacted the municipality, and now wants to reintroduce the Finnish language on the website.
The municipality is currently in the process of reintroducing Finnish-language information on its website, the official stated. Not all over one hundred Finnish-language pages will return; some contained outdated information, and much of the content is now in Swedish and can be translated into Finnish using an AI tool available on the municipality's website. Tshibanda intends to reintroduce both a collection page with information about events and meetings aimed at Swedish-Finns, and a number of other Finnish-language pages that are particularly important for the target group. All this is planned to be ready after the summer, though the exact timeline and specific steps remain unclear.
I think it was wrong and I think that when you are a Finnish administrative area, which Norrköping municipality is, then it obligates here. And there I think we have failed and I think that what we now need to do is to set this right.
Norrköping municipality is a Finnish administrative area, according to the official. According to SVT Nyheter, Pascal Tshibanda described the removal as wrong and said that being a Finnish administrative area obligates the municipality to provide such content, acknowledging a failure that needs to be set right. It is unknown how effective and accurate the AI translation tool is for Finnish content, and what specific outdated information was in the removed pages.