Sciknow Techno Solutions Limited

When we took history lessons the 02 names that we generally recall (read famous universities in India) are Takshashila and Nalanda. Education has already been given great prominence in the Indian society since the Vedic Age.

In more recent times we have the IITs, IIMs & other prominent institutes that proved to be great learning and skill development centers. These institutes have taken Indian across the borders, into a global village and that too successfully. But this is only for the privileged few and for the ones who make it to these institutes on their merit.

Education sector in India has long awaited an overhaul to meet the demand for “Education for All”. Indian youth and younger ones in the last decade or so are more technology driven and self-aware.

Why Digital Education is fast catching everyone’s interest and imagination?

Firstly it revives the education sector based on faster communication facilities.

Government of India is bridging the Digital Divide.

Programs like “Digital Skills of India” mooted by Intel and Qualcomm have made some great inroads.

The ambitious “National Optical Fibre Network (NOFN)” is going to be the backbone of the Digital India. This takes network connectivity to remote place. Digital education tags along.

Gamification: Recently focus of content experience has shifted towards gamification. Diverse interactive content is available online and offline.

Smart Classes are already being accepted as reality for K 12 education.

Live Virtual Classrooms have paver the way for college level education in the country.

Future:

Only 15% of Indians have access to the internet. Under the ICT@Schools schemes, the government has spent more that Rs. 2000 crores since 2004. However only 60% secondary schools were equipped with computer. Programmes have failed due to lack of comprehensive vision that links technology for improving learning, build teaching capabilities.

As per the directions of Department of Personnel & Training under the Digital India initiative, NIC developed an real time attendance system known popularly as AEBAS. It is a mandate for all government bodies and departments to do away with the old register records based attendance system and bring in the AEBAS. Here are a few most common queries:

Aadhaar Enabled Biometric Attendance System (AEBAS)

Q.1 How does an organisation start Biometric Attendance System (BAS) for their employees?

Ans. Please submit details of the nodal officer and upload a signed request by the head of the department on attendance.gov.in portal. System would send OTP to the mobile number/email id of the nodal officer which needs to be entered again on the portal for verification. Back-end administrator would then check the details of the organisation submitted and make the organisation active by assigning it a unique sub-domain which will be the first name of the website. Nodal officer will then be sent an email by the system giving username (which will be the sub-domain name assigned to the organisation) and a password.

Q.2 Steps to be done by the nodal officer to start registration of employees

Ans. Nodal officer would need to login on attendance.gov.in with the user name and password sent on completion of step 1 and then create master list of locations of their offices, designation of their offices and divisions/units/groups within their organisation.

Q.3 How does employee start registering on the portal ?

Ans. After nodal officer completes step 1 & 2, employee can start registering on-line either at attendance.gov.in by submitting their details along with their Aadhaar number.

Q.4 What are steps of verification of employees?

Ans. Nodal Officer would need to verify details submitted by the employee including whether Aadhaar number entered by the employee belongs to them. After completing of the above verifications, employee would be informed by SMS/Email that his registration process is completed on the attendance.gov.in is completed.

Q.5 Whether an employee will be able to mark his attendance on any Biometric Attendance System (BAS) terminal installed in any Government Building

Ans. Yes, this will be possible as employee database for all central Government employees will be maintained centrally with a unique 6 digit id provided for every Government employee (based on the last 6 or first 6 digits of his/her Aadhaar number whichever is available in the system). The dashboard reports would be able show the location/building from where an employee has marked his attendance.

Q.6 How will an employee mark attendance if he/she is not having Aadhaar number ?

Ans. Aadhhar number is essential for registering an employee in BAS. Government employees who are not having Aadhaar number can enroll themselves for Aadhaar numbers in the special camps which are being held by UIDAI in various Government Buildings or permanent enrolment centres of UIDAI in Delhi as per details available at the link below as given:https://appointments.uidai.gov.in/easearch.aspx Single point of contact for arranging Aadhaar enrollment facility at Bhawans is as per details given below.

Shri Suman Kumar,

ADG, Regional office, UIDAI, Delhi

Phone: 23481111

Email: suman[at]uidai[dot]net[dot]in

Q.7 Is network connectivity essential for marking attendance

Ans. Yes, as it is an online attendance system. Network connectivity will be essential for marking attendance. Therefore, two types of connectivity are being planned with each attendance terminal; one wi-fi connectivity on NICNET/broadband and other sim based GSM connectivity in the tablet. At a high level the overall solution has two main components.

(i) Front End System (to be installed at client user end)

The Front End System would be a hardware device like Android tablet or a Desktop PC having client application. Once the user ID (6 digit unique number assigned to an employee) is entered, the application would prompt user to provide the biometric data through finger print/Iris scanner which will be sent through the network connectivity to the backend system.

(ii) Back End System (attendance servers to be hosted in NIC data centre with connectivity to UIDAI for real-time bio-metric authentication)

The Back End System (also called the attendance server) would have functionalities to receive data from the client terminals and send it for real-time Aadhaar authentication. It would also have features for organisation/employee registration and preparing real time attendance reports in dashboard. It would be possible to see dashboard reports of each organisation by using sub-domain assigned to an organisation e.g.nic.attendance.gov.in

Q.8 No of biometric terminals required

Ans. Every employee will need to enter his 6 digit unique id on the touch screen of the tablet and then present his bio-metric (finger print/ iris) for authentication. This may initially take up to 30 seconds to 1 minute depending on number of attempts required. With some practice and training, the time for giving bio-metric attendance by each employee may reduce to less than 10 seconds.Therefore one bio-metric terminal may be sufficient for about 30 to 40 employees during 30 minute peak load time. Assuming 50% to 70% employees will be coming to office during the peak timings, one bio-metric terminal can be planned for catering to every 50 employees in the department. Also, multiple machines will be put in the entry gate that can be commonly used by employees of different ministries/departments, waiting time in the queue will further reduce.

Q.9 Where to install tablet based terminals?

Ans. It is suggested to install multiple BAS terminals at the entry gates of the buildings where security is positioned round the clock.

Q.10 Where to install desktop based finger print devices?

Ans. It is suggested to install desktop finger print devices on Windows desktop PCs connected on LAN (NICNET) in the offices of JS and above and also with section officers for marking attendance of the employees working in the respective sections in order to avoid rush at the attendance terminals installed at the entry gates.

Q.11 Who would maintain the attendance terminals, connectivity and attendance software for desktop PCs?

Ans. It would be additional responsibility of FMS who are maintaining LAN/NICNET connectivity in the Bhawans under guidance and coordination of nicnet/network managers. Additional FMS are being proposed to be deployed at Bhawans under this project.

Q.12 Type of reports that will be available on dashboard