Recommendations and guidelines

Various guidelines, recommendations and standards have been drawn up for web services, in Finland and elsewhere.

Some of the guidelines and recommendations focus on a specific area such as metadata or data security. Some of the guidelines and recommendations are more broad-based and deal with the whole life cycle of the web service. One example of broad-based recommendations is JHS 129 - Principles for planning and implementing public administration web services (in Finnish only).

Guidelines and recommendations are given by various bodies. The JHS recommendations which concern the state and local authorities are drawn up by JUHTA - the advisory committee on information management in public administration.

The Government Information Security Management Board (VAHTI) draws up guidelines on data security. Acts and decrees also have to be taken into account when producing web services.

To make web services easier to find, it is important to aim for a unified vocabulary.

There are glossaries and other recommendations in the Finnish version of this website. They are mostly in Finnish, but some of them have also been produced in Swedish and can be found in the Swedish version of the website.