Directorate of Education (DoE) of the Delhi government runs one of India’s largest school education systems. In order to run its affairs smoothly, the department has developed a web-based application for online administration through MIS (management information system).

Nityanand, assistant director (education) of DoE, explains: "For example, the employee module is internally linked with the payroll module for the grant of pay for all the employees. And for the finance module, the sanction order is generated through us, otherwise funds cannot be drawn from pay and accounts offices." He adds, "If you have a look at our website, you will see we have a court module, library management system, AERU (application for essentiality certificate, recognition and upgradation) and GIS (Geographical Information System)."

There is a login and password for each of the 949 government schools in Delhi. By using this, the schools feed all the data on attendance of students and teachers on a daily basis. The salaries of teachers and employees are directly credited online into their accounts and the website keeps a track of all the transactions. All the information pertaining to teachers’ transfers and postings, their annual confidential reports (ACRs) are written online.

Avinash Kumar, team leader, MIS, says students gain the most from this initiative. "Everything brought out by the DoE was done keeping the students in mind," he says, "For example, we made admissions online for students wishing to shift from the Delhi Municipal Corporation-run schools to those run by the Delhi government since we realised that many students do this. We also extended the date of admissions from July 31 to August 16. Not only this, earlier all the government subsidies for students used to be given to the school principals, but now we have opened bank accounts in the name of most of the students. We have a tie-up with Punjab National Bank and so far, we have opened accounts of more than 10 lakh children."

The DoE has given every student and teacher an 11-digit unique identity number. Through this number, school leaving certificates and report cards are generated online and at the year-end students are promoted online.

All details of schools, including information of its geographical boundaries, school infrastructure, class-wise weekly syllabus, laws, rules, circulars and other important links are also available.

Puneet, a programmer at MIS, says, "Whether schools need any repairs, the state of classrooms and bathrooms, supply of water and electricity and status of everything to do with repair and maintenance of schools is fed into the system by the school administration and then we look into them to fix the problems."

There are several benefits for the officers and employees. Like the list of the employees transferred in a particular period, list of those who have applied for transfer, names of existing principals and vice-principals, list of those under suspension and a number of dynamic reports for administrative purposes and all annual records are available online.

Kumar says at present pilot projects are being carried out in four schools of south Delhi in which all monetary benefits offered by way of free textbooks, uniform and other welfare schemes are being sent directly to the students. If these work to the department’s satisfaction the scheme would be implemented in all the schools from the next session.

Data entry and compilation is done on a daily basis by school principals and IT assistants who are outsourced to private companies and hired by the DoE. Rajni, an IT assistant in Government Sarvodaya Vidyalaya in Civil Lines, hired by a private company whose name she refuses to disclose, says, "I manually feed all the information of attendance of teachers and students from registers to the website of DoE daily after the school gets over. I also send e-mails and circulars to the directorate. This system is very convenient and all the data is consolidated together class-wise onto the website."

Principals are more than happy about this initiative. Harbir Singh, principal, Sarvodaya Bal Aur Kanya Vidyalaya, says, "This entire procedure of logging the data online is a great idea and we have been religiously following it ever since the government initiated it. Not only is there a database for all classes and teachers, we also get to know whether the children have had their mid-day meals and received their books."

G Das, principal, Rajkiya Pratibha Vikas Vidyalaya, concurs, "The initiative is very beneficial and everything gets done quickly. No workload is on any one person or department. Previous records don’t have to be maintained by the administrative staff; the directorate through their website takes care of everything. Right from online admissions, to attendance, to salaries being credited for teachers, to students receiving government subsides, everything is just a click away."

Even as the DoE has done a great job in having created an easily accessible database, this project has several limitations.

"Our website is maintained in-house and is running successfully. But all my employees are on contractual basis, so if they come across better prospects somewhere they leave. I think all our engagements could be coordinated better through permanent technical staff," admits Kumar, "Also we are operating on the old version of our software which naturally is affecting our efficiency and productivity. So, there is an urgent need to upgrade the software to match with the latest technology in the field. There are security issues because of the old version. With the coming in of new software all my data processing and data execution will be get done fast, which will increase the outcome of the work."

Nityanand similarly voices concerns over training and capacity building. "We used to have this earlier, but it got stalled in between. We have more than 900 schools under our umbrella; we should give all the principals atleast a month’s training or more to understand the working of this process."

Yet, this system has made available for the first time all information on schools, students and teachers online. As Ranbir Singh, general manager (public sector) of Microsoft India, says, "E-governance in directorate of education has not only helped in computerisation of records and processes, but more importantly it has provided the much-needed insights so that appropriate action can be taken on time. It continuously monitors and evaluates content and performance."

sonam@governancenow.com