eVaka - Espoo
In a nutshell
EVaka is a client and information system used by the City of Espoo's Finnish-speaking and Swedish-speaking early childhood education units. The development of eVaka was started by Espoo and later joined the cities of Tampere, Oulu and Turku.
Through eVaka, guardians can apply for places in early childhood education, pre-primary education, service voucher units and clubs. The system is used for processing client information related to children and their guardians, e.g. client fees and decisions.
The staff of our early childhood education units use eVaka on mobile devices to record attendances, and they also communicate with guardians through the system.
Guardians reserve hours of attendance in early childhood education and submit notifications of absence through the system. Guardians can also check childs early childhood education plans, pre-primary education plans and pedagogical documentation on their own devices. Guardians are also able to send and receive messages from the staff members.
All the guardians, who have children in early childhood education in Espoo, use the system. There are nearly 26 000 guardians using eVaka in Espoo.
What makes the service user-centric?
Through eVaka services of early childhood education units are made more accessible to the citizens. Communication between guardians and the professionals has become significantly easier. eVaka makes viewing data and checking schedules much more convenient than before. Communication between staff members and home has moved to a new era. Participating in their child's daily life in early childhood education has become much easier for parents.
EVaka is accessible and inclusive. Citizens can give feedback about the service and it is developed based on the feedback received. Espoo's customer service help guardians use eVaka in Service points and in Digital support at Espoo. Guardian instructions can be found in espoo.fi-website and there is also Youtube channel for guardian instructions. All information is provided in Finnish, Swedish and English and some of the instructions are also transferred in most often used languages.
The users are saying that eVaka is freshly looking and easy to use. It is nice to be able to check all the information of the child when it is needed and also easy to inform the staff if child is not able to participate in for some reason. Sending messages is easy, but the notification from the new message is needed.
What impact has the service had?
In the development work, a considerable improvement has been achieved compared to the previous situation. In Espoo, we have gotten rid of most of the paper forms. In the past, there has been no electronic visibility for guardians at all of the information now contained in eVaka. One major impact has been the reduction of administrative burden. Evaka makes everyday communication easier and safer for the guardians, but also for the educational professionals working in Espoo’s early childhood education units. Staff members are now able to use only one system instead of many and all information of the children are in one place, easy to access but still safely protected. Every adult working with the children have access on child’s information which makes team work more efficient. Staff members have most of the information on mobile devices in addition to laptops. It is also easy to check how many children are present and to make sure that there are enough adults when needed. It is easy to describe children’s day to the guardians by using pictures, videos and notes.
How was the service co-created?
During the pandemic time we used a few of the units that were piloting the new features and collecting the feedback from guardians as well as from the staff. We want to develop the system in a user-oriented way and based on the feedback received from the guardians. Now that the situation with the pandemic sets no longer limits, the designers have interviewed the guardians and are still interviewing them. The needs of immigrants have also been taken into account. The goal is that it is possible to function in the system without understanding every word. Specific attention has been given to the usage of clear language. With agile software development it is easy to make changes considering user opinions. Development work continues at least till the end of 2024.
EVaka works in browser. There isn’t a dedicated app. The feedback in developing other systems has been that people wouldn’t like to have new apps in their phones. Of course some would prefer to use an app.
