| 4. In which ways is the initiative creative and innovative?
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Since 2009 the problem has been discussed on the "Plattform Schule und Schneesport" (platform school and snow sport) to find possible solutions. These should make the sport attractive again for pupils and teaching staff, thus increasing the number of ski courses held in Upper Austria.
Aims
1. Economically feasible offers for a ski course in Upper Austria
2. Interconnection and cooperation between the schools, pedagogical universities, the state of Upper Austria, tourism associations, cable car association, the associations for ski instructors, ski schools and bus companies
3. Promoting training for accompanying teachers and advanced teacher training
4. All-inclusive packages (bus, lift, food, accommodation)
In order to reduce the financial burden for the parents, respectively the legal guardians and to facilitate the children more with the practice of skiing and snowboarding, the state of Upper Austria provides all participating pupils from Upper Austrian schools, and respectively from this season on the kindergarten children too, with a voucher for each winter season. This voucher enables the free charge of use of lift-type services (lifts, cable cars) in the Upper Austrian ski regions, which can only be redeemed in connection with a winter sports week, respectively a school winter sports day.
Additionally, relevant information packs have been compiled for the target group. The Upper Austrian winter sports week is seen as a pilot project with the efforts of the "Plattform Schule und Schneesport" (platform school and snow sport). In addition to the winter sport grant other endeavors took place, so as to make skiing more attractive for the teaching staff and pupils like advanced teacher training in the skiing areas offered by the skiing regions, teachers were invited to get to know the possibilities in the skiing areas, the all-in packages costs 120 Euro for a winter sports week etc.
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| 5. Who implemented the initiative and what is the size of the population affected by this initiative?
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• the regional education authority (representatives from various school divisions),
• the department for IT of the regional education authority for using the data base there and to link it to the system where the vouchers are produced and accounted
• the cable car association of the Chamber of Commerce,
• the state of Upper Austria’s family department,
• the association of ski instructors and
• the regional skiing association
• tourism in Upper Austria (hotels, tourism board, tourist information)
• parents association of public schools
• Xortex IT
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| 6. How was the strategy implemented and what resources were mobilized?
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Via an online form on www.familienkarte.at (the website of the department for families) the application from the school’s side, and respectively the kindergarten’s, can be accessed. The school / kindergarten data is already in the system.
As the pupils are already listed in the e*SA (an administrative programme of the regional education authority for teachers), a final list of participants can already be compiled in the system and can then be used for the online application. Just the date of the ski course needs to be added. Further, the desired ski region and the accommodation need to be also selected.
The vouchers are forwarded to the school for those participants named by the school. In the appendix there is an explanation that can be detached and given to the pupils to take home for their parents / guardians. At the start of the ski course the vouchers are handed in at the counter for the lift and in return the participants receive the regular lift cards.
On each voucher there is an individually generated EAN-Code which guarantees the validity of the voucher and thus, is relevant for the final bill later. The ski region concerned deals with the deductions and the redeemed vouchers online with the administrative office of the government of Upper Austria. The redeemed vouchers are fed into the system by means of a hand scanner by the ski region concerned, which in turn is automatically credited and thus, the voucher is then void. On the 1st of every month the billing is automatically carried out in the online system for the ski regions and subsequently, the payment process is activated at the Upper Austrian authorities. Through the online billing process of the vouchers, which depending on the ski region are of a very high value, these vouchers no longer need to be sent on to the Upper Austrian family department. The EAN-codes guarantee that every voucher can only be redeemed once.
As all of the processing of the subsidies is carried out solely online, substantial administrative costs for all concerned are saved (personnel, postage costs etc.). Furthermore, a consistent evaluation of the funding required is possible.
The budget is about 550.000 Euro, which is needed for the ski cards, which is covered by the family department. The remaining costs for the ski cards (about 200.000 Euros a year) are covered by the cable car companies. The initial costs occurred for the IT program (15.000 Euros), the scanners (1.400 Euros), vouchers (2.000 Euros a year for codes and paper) are also covered by the Upper Austrian Family Department. On 1st of September 2009 the regional government of Upper Austria decided on the regulations of the subsidy for the winter sports weeks.
It was realised thanks to a good and well established cooperation between the regional authorities in charge of family affairs and the members of the platform school and snow sports. This collaborative architecture results in economically feasible offers for ski courses. Social inclusion is assured and the efforts addresses economic policies whilst being didactically relevant.
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| 7. Who were the stakeholders involved in the design of the initiative and in its implementation?
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Winter tourism in Austria is based on skiing and particularly with this support the state of Upper Austria was able to counteract the looming "out" for winter sports in schools and kinder gardens. Meanwhile this project is already a success story: This promotional strategy has been offered since the winter season of 2009/10. In the first year 7.088 pupils were granted such a voucher for ski trips lasting several days, in 2010/11 it was already 8.700 vouchers. In the last season, for the first time 9156 vouchers for Upper Austrian winter sports weeks were issued. For this year’s winter season we expect to see an increase in the number of claims for free of charge lift passes. For single winter sports days for primary children and kindergarten children an additional 17.000 vouchers were issued for the first season (2012/13). For this season (2013/14) we see already an enormous increase in the demand for the single winter sport days of 100 per cent!
Furthermore, the increased demand for accommodation, especially for school children is noticeable in tourist accommodation. The investing (of JuFa) in "youth and family guesthouses" in the locations of Grünau / Almtal (Ski region Kasberg) and Spital/Phyrn (Wurzeralm) can be seen as a positive indication and success of the efforts, both domiciles open in this season.
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| 8. What were the most successful outputs and why was the initiative effective?
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By the end of the 2013 family surveys (n=1500 sets of parents) the promotion "Upper Austrian winter sports week " received the best rating: 73 percent of those who used the service are "very satisfied" with it and 20 percent are "quite satisfied", which is a satisfaction rate of 93 percent. This was the highest satisfaction rate over all grants and subsidies.
The implementation of a voucher system has the advantage that only the vouchers that are actually utilised by the subsidised post have to be paid for. Thus, a very exact amount of aid is guaranteed. Through the integrated e-Government-application a very precise documentation is ensured and detailed statistical data can be drawn upon for possible improvements.
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| 9. What were the main obstacles encountered and how were they overcome?
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The application forms are filled in by the teachers. Therefore they use their own administrative program (e*SA). To be able to reach the highest amount of support from the teachers it has to be ensured that the system works as easily as possible. With just a few clicks the teachers fill in the application form and send it online to the family department. So we used the IT from the education authority to get the applications online into our system. Teachers only need to open their system with a click on the button "winter sports week" to get the necessary data. They have to fill in only date, the data of the ski areas and accommodation, which is already fixed in the data.
On the other hand we found a solution for the billing with less operating expense for the cable car companies. The billing of the vouchers is also done in the web based system on www.familienkarte.at. The EAN codes can be scanned with a handheld scanner into the system. The costs for the simple scanners are about 70 Euros. So the costs for IT hardware are quite low.
The costs for a ski card for winter sport week during a school ski course are between 55 and 75 Euros. The amount for one ski card redeemed by the government is capped with 50 Euros. So the more attractive skiing areas have to cover a bigger amount, while the smaller and probably economically not so strong skiing areas get nearly the full amount for a lift card reimbursed. Therefore a contract is done with every cable car company.
Billing is sent via secure E-Mail with SSL certification.
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