E-Governance

Report of the E-Governance Committee - Academic Year (2018-19)

E-governance is a buzzing term which now finds ample relevance in any organization's dictionary. E-governance in educational sector facilitate the processing and maintenance of information, improves transparency in administration and provides faster information dissemination. It's applications needs a centralized approach in document storage and retrieval. An efficient push and pull of information can be facilitated using a proper Management Information System (MIS) which can be customized and built according to an institutions need. As we gear up for a NAAC visit after a tenure of 7 years, the current e- infrastructure of the college need to be strengthened in terms of hardware and application softwares.

To begin with, three new working committees were constituted for the purpose: Certification committee, Documentation committee, and an e-governance committee. The Certification committee made a study of the requirements in e-governance for various certifications like NAAC, NIRF, DBT, ISO, etc. 

The documentation committee prepared a structure for creating a central database through Linways for facilitating full automated MIS.  The structure includes the following: Advanced Faculty Profile, Student Support, Student Activities, Department Profile. This year the documentation of faculty profile from 2014 to date has been completed.

The e-governance committee conducted research on the benefits and implementation of e-governance in higher educational institutions.  The committee also organized a seminar on Faculty enrichment programme on e-governance in Higher Education: From NAAC Perspective for both teaching and non teaching staff on 29 November 2018. Dr Gladston Raj was the resource person. Following this, a preliminary   study on the E-infrastructure of Vimala College was made.

The e-infrastructure in the college includes the following :

1. SPARK :  Salary
2. Linways : Database, Examination, Admission and other administrative aspects
3. Koha : Library  database
4. Website (INI Technologies Pvt Ltd)

The Committee indentified the potential for e-governance in areas like Planning and Development, Administration, Examination Management System (EMS), Finance and Accounts, Student admission and support. A brief report is presented below:

1. The most indispensable element in the implementation of E-governance in any scenario rests on an unlimited and unrestrained internet connectivity. In Vimala, the major form of connectivity is achieved via a LAN connection, with a maximum capacity to support 256 systems. Nonetheless the college has been over-reliant on this connectivity with around 400 systems at present. Yet another form of connectivity in the campus derives from Wi-Fi and the college is yet to provide unlimited connectivity.
2. Regarding Student admission and support, the college has made a great leap in the implementation of E-Governance with a full automation of student admission procedures and maintenance of an exhaustive student profile.
3. With respect to examination, full automation of EMS has not been attained.  However, segments like attendance evaluation, assignment allocation and its evaluation, conduct of online MCQ examinations, procedure for valuation for end semester examination and result publication has been fully automated.
4. In case of Personal, Pedagogical and Administrative Support for teachers, attempts have been limited to the creation of an advanced profile for faculties. There is still scope for further improvement by the inclusion of an activity log, notification broadcasting system, etc.