Early childhood education and care system eVaka wins Open World Hero 2024 award

The award was presented on 8 October 2024 in Tampere during the annual international Mindtrek Technology Conference. Harri Luttinen, Digital Development Manager of the City of Espoo, and Elli Rasimus, Director of Early Childhood Education and Care of the City of Tampere, were present at the event to accept the award. The award is granted by the Finnish Centre for Open Information Systems COSS.

In Tampere, eVaka was introduced in early childhood education and care on 1 April 2022, and in pre-primary education in 2023. The first version of eVaka was developed and introduced in early childhood education and care by the Growth and Learning Sector of the City of Espoo.

Award-winning eVaka is an open-source customer information and resource planning system for early childhood education and care, developed jointly by the cities of Espoo, Tampere, Oulu and Turku. It has so far been deployed by 12 municipalities with a combined population base of around 1.2 million residents. In addition to guardians, tens of thousands of municipal employees use the system every week.

Quick and up-to-date information

From the customer service perspective, eVaka has enabled a smoother and more secure process for managing service guidance and customer fees.
“The customer’s information is provided directly by the Digital and Population Data Services Agency. eVaka has enabled quick and up-to-date access to information. We have also received fast updates to the application,” says Katri Mantere, Customer Service Manager for early childhood education and care at the City of Tampere.

In Tampere, customers (employees of early childhood education and care and guardians) are asked for user feedback annually, and the aim is to develop and introduce as many development ideas as possible.

“We have been able to make use of the input and competence of ECEC specialists and management in their own sector when defining and developing new features. This partnership has resulted in an incredibly user-friendly system. We have been able to take the needs and wishes of the municipality into account, and cooperation has been smooth,” says Heli Ketola, the ICT product owner from the City of Tampere, who is involved in the development work.

This year, all of Tampere's fringe municipalities (Lempäälä, Vesilahti, Pirkkala, Ylöjärvi, Nokia, Hämeenkyrö, Kangasala and Orivesi) have also adopted eVaka.

Development work continues in the municipalities

In the justification for the award, eVaka was described as a unique open-source project in the municipal information system field. According to the judges, it is an excellent example of successful co-creation between municipalities. eVaka combines inter-municipality cooperation and promotion of shared interests with openness and transparency.

As the development of the system is in the hands of municipalities, it is easier to take their needs and those of the customers into account in the development work of eVaka, which is an ongoing effort.

“eVaka combines many processes into a single system, making them easier to manage and more efficient. It also produces up-to-date information that helps to better guide and plan early childhood education and care. For example, ECEC units can monitor the utilisation and occupancy rates of a unit in real time and utilise that information to plan the use of a human resource,” says Elli Rasimus, Director of Early Childhood Education and Care at the City of Tampere.

Open World Hero is an award presented by COSS to promote openness in information systems. The annual award is presented to a person or organisation who has done significant work to achieve this goal in Finland.