ARNO
About this good practice
Costs for educational services are almost half of the budget in Tartu. The management of the area is decentralised – most of the decisions are delegated to the local schools and kindergartens. Still, there are several services the municipality has to cover, and numerous activities are cost-effective to be organised centrally.
In 2013 the City of Tartu launched an information system – ARNO – to allocate school places for children going to first grade. The system has expanded remarkably since then and basically all services of primary and basic education are managed through it now.
ARNO allows to submit and process different applications, manage the vacancies in schools and kindergartens, show the information in real time, communicate with the parents, predict the demand for educational services in the future, etc.
As the system is developed by a local small company of Tartu, it is constantly evolving, and changes can be launched quickly. Today the same company which developed the first application by the order of Tartu provides ARNO as a standardised educational service platform in 26 municipalities (out of 79) in Estonia.
Resources needed
The development of the platform between 2013-2015 was about 25 000 €, yearly maintenance is about 10 000 € (taxes included). All additional functionalities that have been purchased by other municipalities are available for all service users.
Evidence of success
26 cities of Estonia use the platform.
ARNO has 50 781 users in Tartu (15 903 from the 2020/2021 academic year alone): 50 163 regular users, 531 representatives of educational institutions, 40 administrators and/or municipality officials, 28 caterers and 19 accountants.
The practice is a great example of the emergence of local innovation chains – a need/problem of the local municipality gives the opportunity for a small company to become a significant player in the market of public IT-services.
Potential for learning or transfer
Although regulations are remarkably different in countries, this is a great model of how one public organisation can change the market by a single procurement to solve a small issue with the help of IT.
Benefit: Integration of different e-services in the field of education