Finnish cultural policy has been actively developed in recent years. In 2009, the Ministry of Education and Culture drew up its own strategy for cultural policy that extends to 2020, while a government report on the future of culture was completed in 2010. These two documents discuss the changes affecting the cultural policy operating environment, set development targets and propose concrete measures for achieving them. However, simply setting targets and measures is not in itself enough. These days, the implementation of measures within central government needs to be monitored to determine whether the measures have achieved the targets set and whether the targets have been socio-politically relevant.

As part of its strategic development work, the Ministry of Education and Culture carried out a cultural policy indicator project. The project was conducted jointly with Statistics Finland and Cupore, the Finnish Foundation for Cultural Policy Research.