The goal of the thesis is to answer the main research question how Ministry of the Interior steers the rescue services and how the steering model could be developed in the new system of rescue services.

This is a descriptive analysis how the government steering of the rescue services has been implemented from the mid 1970's onwards. The goal is to describe government steering methods and how these methods have been used especially in rescue services. The main goal is to understand how the steering has been done before and how it should be done in the future in order to develop rescue services further.

The main result is that steering by norms should be balanced with regards to resources and this should be supported by relevant information steering. Information steering should be based on reciprocal networking where all the stakeholders will be committed. This calls for new kind of information steering method of networks.