Good Practices and Innovations in Public Governance 2003-2011

2008 Category 3: Tunisia
Africa
Tunisia
2008 Category 3 Winner
Online Academic Orientation Service
Direction générale des affaires estudiantines, Tunisia
Description
Providing students with an interactive and participative online system for
university enrollment.
Summary
Through the project entitled “Online Academic Orientation”, the Ministry of Education
has set up an online portal that allows Tunisian university students to interact
online with academic staff, to receive advice and guidance regarding their studies,
and to apply for the study areas of their choice. This process, which was once long
and painstaking, is nowadays mastered thanks to information and communication
technologies (ICT).
The Problem
The Tunisian Ministry of Higher Education, Scientific Research and Technology
(MESRST) was faced with the problem of managing, in a record time, a significant
flux of new high school graduates who sought information about the courses offered
by public universities during the two hottest months of the year (July and August).
Prior to implementing the Online Academic Orientation initiative, the Ministry had
to send to all high school diploma candidates (around 150,000 per year) a guide including
an exhaustive table of all undergraduate programs available in Tunisia as
well as information on the eligibility requirements. It also had to make necessary
calculations and classifications once the grades were made public by the Ministry of
Education (MEF). These operations involved a lengthy and costly process. Since its
inception, this initiative has allowed high school graduates in Tunisia and their families
to take advantage of ICT applications at low cost. Thanks to this national initiative,
the Tunisian public administration can avoid costly and time consuming traditional
operations linked to college orientation. This initiative has also eliminated
possible errors while filling out forms as well as allowed students to access their
personal page through the usage of a user name and password and make any necessary
corrections to their personal information.
The major problem that the Ministry of Higher Education, Scientific Research and
Technology (MESRST) in Tunisia faced in previous years was the management of an
impressive stream of new high school graduates who needed orientation to enroll in
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