About the websiteText version

The website of the Ministry of Justice, www.om.fi, provides information on, i.a., the Ministry, its work and duties and on ongoing legislation and development projects at the Ministry.

The new website of the Ministry was launched on 11 September 2006 after a both visual and technical revision. To some extent also the content was revised. The team E-transactions and web systems at the IT centre of the Ministry of Justice was in charge of the graphic design. Logica was responsible for the technical realization.

Not only the Finnish, but also the Swedish and English pages were revised. Out of these, the Finnish and Swedish pages are the most extensive ones. The pages also provide some information in, e.g. Sami, German and Russian.

The Media and Communications Unit of the Ministry of Justice maintains the website and is responsible for it. The aim is to ensure the correctness and topicality of the content of the website. The Ministry is not responsible for possible mistakes appearing on the website. Nor is the Ministry responsible for the harmful consequences of a technical fault or such material linked to the website that is published by outside parties.

Structure of the website

The website is divided into three columns. The left column includes the menu, the middle column the main content of the page and the right column the links Search and Index, pictures and links to other pages of the website or to websites maintained by others.

Entry page
The entry page includes the latest news regarding the administrative sector of the Ministry of Justice. The entry page has links to other websites maintained by the Ministry of Justice, such as the legal data bank Finlex.fi and the election data baseVaalit.fi, and to the most popular pages of om.fi. The entry page also provides access to the network service of the judicial system and other web pages of the administrative sector.

The English-language website has five main sections:

The Ministry
This section includes information on the work of the Ministry of Justice and its administrative sector as well as on the organization, duties and aims of the Ministry. It also provides information on legal matters in the EU. The section further provides links to the websites of the administrative sector and to i.a. the Ministries of Justice of other countries and websites with information on the legislation of other countries.

Current issues
This section includes news, speeches given by the Minister and archived websites.

Publications
This section includes the English-language publications of the Ministry of Justice and brochures compiled by the Ministry on, for instance, the Marriage Act and the Constitution. The brochures are also available in other languages, such as Sami, French and Russian. They can be printed out in their entirety using the right top link on the pages.

Basic provisions
These pages provide information on the legislative process, legality control, international legal assistance, the Constitution and Language Act and other key laws and laws of current interest.

Contact information
This section provides contact information for the Ministry, listed by department.

Function

The link path at the top of the page shows the position of the user on the website.

At the top of each page are links to the different language versions and About the website, Sitemap and Feedback. The Feedback page has a form for giving feedback and instructions on how feedback can be sent to the Ministry.

Search
Each of the Finnish, Swedish and English pages has a search function with which to search for information on the web pages of the Ministry. The sitemap and the subject headings in alphabetical order also facilitate the search for information. Press releases of the Ministry of Justice can also be found in the press release archive of the Council of State.

Subject headings
Every page has an alphabetical index of subject headings on the right-hand margin of the page. It includes key subjects of om.fi. which work as links to the page where the subject in question occurs. The index also includes the other network services maintained by the Ministry of Justice.

Links
The internal links of the Ministry open up in the same browser window. External links open up in a new browser window.

Links to the content of the page are as a rule to be found after the content or in the right-hand column of the page.

At the beginning of longer pages the content is presented in the form of a so-called table of contents where the links lead to different sections on the same page.

Printing
Each page has a print link at the bottom of the page. The link opens up the content page in a new browser window from which the text version of the page can be printed.

Text version
The website of the Ministry of Justice is available also in a text version which can be reached through the link text version at the top of each page. The direct address to the text version is http://www.om.fi/text/en.

Text size
The website is scalable, i.e. the user can change the size of the text by clicking View > Text size at the top of the page.

Pictures

The picture on the top bar on the entry page is a part of the statue Lex (The Law), one of the sculptor Walter Runeberg's (1838-1920) best-known works. The sculpture is seen as a symbol of legality and it is one of the fundamental works of Finnish political visual arts. The statue shows the Finnish lion, a sword and the Constitution as a shield to protect the Finnish maiden.

The sculpture which was originally named Patria is one of four sculptures in the pedestal of the statue of Alexander II (1894) on the Senate square in Helsinki. Lex is used as a separate work, for instance, in the staircase of the House of the Estates and in the President's Palace.

The Media and Communications Unit holds the rights to the pictures on the website. The photographers are mentioned if the pictures are taken by somebody outside the Ministry.

Copyright and linking to the website

The Ministry of Justice holds all rights to the text and pictures published on the website, unless otherwise mentioned. The photographers are mentioned if the pictures are taken by somebody outside the Ministry.

Linking to the website is freely allowed and the texts may be quoted, but the source must then necessarily be stated. Other use of the material requires special permission from the Media and Communications Unit of the Ministry of Justice.

Further distribution of attached files without permission elsewhere than on the Ministry of Justice website is prohibited. Linking to individual pictures is absolutely prohibited.

Automatic collection of data and processing of identification data

The website of the Ministry of Justice is open to everyone and browsing does not require registration. Personal data on the users of the service enabling identification of individual users are not collected. Statistics on the use of the service, i.e., on the total number of visitors, the most popular pages, from what pages the visitors have entered the website and the exit page, are collected.

Identification data are recorded only for the sake of ensuring and developing the technical realization and use of the website. Only the personnel in charge of these tasks can process identification data to the extent required by their duties. Identification data must not be disclosed to third parties in situations other than those prescribed by law.

Technical recommendations

The web pages work with Internet Explorer and Netscape 4 and more recent browser versions as well as with Opera, Mozilla and text based browsers.

For PDF documents, such as publications, the programme Adobe Acrobat Reader is needed. The programme can be downloaded from the Adobe Reader web pages.

For data security reasons the transmitting of certain attached files has been blocked in the network of the Council of State. These files are such types of attached files as are generally used to transmit viruses or other possibly harmful programme codes. The following generally used types of attached files will be deleted from the email traffic to and from the network of the Council of State: .bin, .exe, .cmd, .com, .reg, .scr, .lnk, .mbd, .vbs. For more information on this, see the web pages of the Ministry of Finance.

Feedback and additional information

Feedback on the content of the website can be given to the Media and Communications Unit of the Ministry of Justice, address viestinta.om(at)om.fi. Feedback can also be sent using the form for feedback on our pages. Official mail shall be sent to the email address of the registry, oikeusministerio(at)om.fi.

Additional information on the network service of the Ministry is given by the Media and Communications Unit.

Updated on 3 May 2008

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