The City of Tampere, Finland will test a school transport decision system that makes proposals. There is no need for guardians to apply for the right for a child’s school transport; instead, the city automatically sends the decision on the granting of the subsidy. A software robot will check the right for school transport for the school year 2019–2020.

The city has started to use a software robot that checks the distance from home to school of all pre-school and basic education pupils with a journey planner. The software robot measures the shortest suitable pedestrian route from home to school. The guardians and school can see the route based on which the software has calculated the journey in the Helmi student management system.

- The software robot makes a proposal to the principal

Thanks to the software robot, there is no need for the guardian to apply for the school transport subsidy.

“The application has been rather burdensome to fill in. The software robot saves up to half an hour of parents’ time,” says Vice Principal Marika Korpinurmi.

“The proposals made by the robot save also the time of principals and school secretaries, since robots do not make human mistakes. We have tried to simplify the process.”

The software robot makes a proposal to the principal concerning the pre-school and basic education pupils to whom the school transport subsidy should be granted and proposes a suitable mode of transport.

“In Tampere, we first offer the right to a bus travel card, but in special cases, it is possible to arrange the pupil’s transport using group-transport taxis,” says Korpinurmi.

The principal checks the decisions made by the robot and changes them, if necessary. After this, the robot sends a notification of the decision to the guardians. The proposed school transport decisions concern the subsidies of the school year 2019–2020.

The software robot was manufactured by CGI Finland Ltd as part of the Helmi system’s development work.