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

The eVaka information system project for early childhood education, developed by municipalities working together, has been given the 2024 Open World Hero Award. The award was awarded by the Finnish Centre for Open Systems and Solutions COSS ry.

The award was presented on 8 October 2024 during the annual international Mindtrek technology conference held in Tampere. Present at the event to accept the award were Digital Chief Officer Harri Luttinen from the City of Espoo and Director of Early Childhood Education Elli Rasimus from the City of Tampere.

eVaka is an open-source client information and ERP system for early childhood education and care. Its development is a joint effort by the cities of Espoo, Tampere, Oulu and Turku. So far, it has been adopted by a total of 12 municipalities, the population base of which covers approximately 1.2 million residents. In addition to children’s parents and guardians, the system is used by tens of thousands of municipal employees every week.

In the grounds for selecting eVaka as the winner, eVaka is described as a unique open-source project in the field of municipal information systems. According to the judges, it is an excellent example of successful co-creation carried out by municipalities. eVaka combines inter-municipal cooperation, the promotion of common interests, as well as openness and transparency.

“From the perspective of the municipalities that developed the system, it is particularly significant that the municipalities themselves control the development of the system. In this way, the needs of the municipalities and the wishes of the clients can be taken into account better in development,” says Luttinen.

“eVaka combines several different processes into one system, which makes managing them easier and overall operations more efficient. It can also be used to produce information that helps guide and plan early childhood education better. Early childhood education units can now, for example, monitor the use and filling rates of the unit and utilise the information when planning human resources,” Rasimus explains.

In the context of large-scale public sector information systems, co-creation is not easy, but eVaka is an unusually successful feat of co-creation. From the developer municipalities, the cooperation has required a lot of discussion, commitment and determination, as well as efficient project management. The success has been facilitated by the fact that the legislation on early childhood education is the same for everyone.

The challenges related to development have been tackled by dividing the project into stages and taking it forward through the principles of agile development instead of trying to fit all the features into the system from the very beginning. Although the work has been project-based development, it has also succeeded in creating a continuum.

“You could say that this is one of the few open-source information systems critical to the operations of the municipal sector that have been successfully introduced in several user organisations. The development of eVaka will continue in the future. New municipalities are welcome to become users of the system,” says Luttinen.

Open World Hero is a recognition granted by COSS ry, the aim of which is to promote the openness of information systems. The award, which is given annually, is awarded to a person or organisation that has done significant work to achieve this goal in Finland. The itinerant trophy is a piece of art: a glass mosaic ball “In the Nucleus” by the Finnish artist Virginie Loÿ.