Mumbai: After the University of Mumbai (MU) initiated a new online system only to result in a four-month delay in declaration of final-year results and subsequent removal of the varsity’s then vice-chancellor Dr Sanjay Deshmukh, the information and technology department is now working on implementation of the “integration of university management system” across 14 universities in the state. The system is slated for implementation from the next academic year.
After Maharashtra governor C. Vidyasagar Rao asked the government to develop a software system for universities, the information and technology department is working on a new software solution that will be common for all 14 varsities in the state, said Vijay Kumar Gautam, principal secretary IT, to The Asian Age. This, despite the fact that after Mr Deshmukh initiated a new online system to curb irregularities in university results, faulty software and various other issues led to too much delay in declaring the results, which in turn forced the government and in turn, the state governor, to remove Mr Deshmukh.
However, Mr Gautam said that as all universities in the state were spending too much money over developing software as per their requirements, they had decided to develop an integrated university management system that would fulfil all requirements. With this system, data of all varsities would be in the same format so students would not need migration certificates while taking admission in other varsities. Also, the system would be very cheap as compared to individual universities purchasing software solutions.
In case of the online system adopted by MU, professors encountered problems while checking answer sheets on computers which caused delay in declaring results. To avoid a repeat of this situation, the IT department will provide tablets that will be easy to use and will also increase the speed of paper checking. Also, the MU online system had the main answer sheet and supplements detached which created problems. Keeping this in mind, the new system will keep the entire answer sheet along with the supplements intact while scanning. Mr Gautam said that they were in the process of making the new system fail-proof.
