Finland, Published Screensaver
The Finland, Published screensaver streams Finland's national open data catalogue in update order — roughly two and a half thousand datasets from ministries, agencies and municipalities. It runs in the browser with nothing to install; press ESC to exit.
How the Finland, Published screensaver works
The saver reads avoindata.fi, Finland's national open data portal.
No account and no key: the request goes straight from your browser, or from this site's own refreshed copy of the feed where the source does not permit browser access.
Values are drawn on a canvas that resizes with the window, so it works on a laptop or a wall display.
If the source is unreachable the saver says so on screen rather than showing stale numbers as though they were current.
A worked example
Each row gives a dataset title, the organisation that publishes it, when it last changed and how many files it holds. Titles appear in Finnish and Swedish as published. The mundane entries are the good ones — a town's purchase invoices, an alcohol licensing register, a chemicals code list — because that is what a functioning transparency regime actually produces.
Settings & tips
- Accent and Background recolour the display without changing the data.
- Add it to a Multi-view grid to watch it alongside other live savers.
- Press ESC at any time to leave fullscreen.
Frequently asked questions
- Why are the titles not in English?
- Because the catalogue is published in Finland's official languages. Showing the titles as recorded is more honest than machine-translating them into something less precise.
- Who publishes to it?
- Central government agencies, ministries, research institutes and a large number of individual municipalities, which is why the scale of the entries varies so widely.
- Is this real data?
- Yes. It comes from avoindata.fi, Finland's national open data portal. Nothing is invented or simulated, and if the source cannot be reached the saver reports that instead of drawing something plausible.
- Does it cost anything or need an account?
- No. Every screensaver here is free, runs in the browser and needs no sign-up. This one uses a public API that requires no key.