AHSEC goes digital, shall use email no letter

What could be sounding a crude joke to the rest of the world,  The Assam Higher Secondary Education Council (AHSEC) has decided to stop sending letters to its 1500 affiliated institutions but use emails saving Rs 24 lakh annually.

The AHSEC has an archaic rule of ending notifications and letters to each of the institutions by normal mail which cost them Rs 34 per letter. This is being replaced by secure mail with all the institutions coming under a database.

What is supposed to be the simplest operations for rest, the AHSEC with its limited ability, has managed to do.

"The step was conceptualized to eliminate the lengthy and expensive process of bulk posting of letters, notifications and other directions to our 1,500 affiliated institutions across the State. Not just it was an additional task to post the letters to different addresses, often, the HS schools, junior colleges and colleges of rural Assam had to suffer because of the postal delays," AHSEC's Controller of Examination Pankaj Borthakur told media.

"The Controller of Examination has to issue minimum four official letters every month to all the affiliated institutions, with a single letter costing Rs 34. Thus, in one year, the minimum cost incurred in sending such letters to each of the institutions is approximately Rs 24, 48,000, which we are being able to save now," he added.

Unlike earlier, when institutions waited for official letters for every notice and instruction, now any information reaches all of them in minutes, bringing uniformity in the system.

Borthakur and his team have created a digital database of all the 1,500 affiliated institutions, including HS schools, colleges, and universities. With the help of this, any information related to examinations is circulated through emails and bulk messaging under the two-step verification system.

"This process took us two months. We had to create a database and explain the process to those who were skeptical about embracing the change," he added.

The bulk messaging was also used to alert and inform the supervising officers, observers and officers in charge on each day of the HS final exam of 2019.

The Council has also started digitizing the tabulation register (TR), which contains the HS final year marks obtained by the students since the year 1986. On completion of the digitized TR, the marks verification, which used to take a minimum of 15 days, would take only two minutes.

For the ease of students, the form fill-up of HS final exam for Art, Commerce, Science, and Vocational streams has been made online. Additionally, non-institutional private candidates, including betterment and reappearance examinees can also fill up their forms online.