An insight into how the National Board of Accreditation (NBA) went paperless by adopting IT with the help of HCL Infosystems
By Pankaj Maru
The All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) is a key body overseeing technical and engineering education, programs and curriculum, institutes and colleges in India. However, AICTE in 1987 formed the National Board of Accreditation (NBA), under section 10(u) of AICTE Act, to have periodic evaluations of technical institutions and programs as per specified norms and standards as recommended by AICTE council.
Given the role of NBA, it was given an autonomous status on January 7, 2010, with the objective of assurance of quality and relevance of education related to programs in professional and technical disciplines including engineering, technology, management, architecture, pharmacy and hospitality.
Besides, NBA extensively works in introducing new processes, parameters and criteria for accreditation, that follows the best international practices aimed at quality outcomes of professionals.
NBA, since 2010 has become a vital functionary for higher education sector that includes colleges, institutes and universities across India. Every year a large number of educational institutes and establishments approach NBA to evaluate their educational standards, practices and curriculum in order to get accreditation. As per estimates, NBA deals with some 2000 institutes with over 20,000 programs for accreditation.
Need for an IT platform
With such an extensive and significant role, NBA officials found that its existing old paper and file based manual process system was insufficient, lengthy, non-transparent and time-consuming in nature to meet the growing number of accreditation applications.
After a deep thought process, the NBA officials made a progressive decision around 2011 to built and adopt an IT platform that would streamline all departmental processes, activities, functions as well as make the accreditation process transparent, efficient and result oriented.
Under the leadership and vision of Dr. Dinesh K Paliwal, Member Secretary, NBA, it was initially proposed that the departments need to automate by setting up servers, clients and networking internally.
According to Dr. Paliwal, the basic objective was to make the accreditation process transparent and unbiased using IT. ?e wanted to have transparency at the highest level, in the processes, bring in confidence of our stake holders and sharing the information in the public domain. Also, we wanted to make our office more green, efficient using the IT platform and automate processes to reduce operational expenses on paper, printing, travel and overall time,Dr. Paliwal said.
Secondly, the NBA intended to be a member of the Washington Accord framed in 1989, which is an international pact among bodies responsible for accrediting engineering programs.
“The member of the Washington Accord will have significant impact in transforming graduates and professionals with global acceptance in terms of quality of professional education, colleges, institutes as well as meeting the industry demands,” Dr. Paliwal explained.
While, NBA had these strategic goals on one side, Dr. Paliwal along with other officials conceptualized a major transformational plan of NBA using IT. “We thought of having an automated system and processes in place using an ICT platform that brings on board all stake holders including officials, colleges, education institutions, curriculum – programs and public in a way that all the information and processes as it happens is visible in the public domain on a real time basis,” Dr. Paliwal added.
The Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD) and AICTE without any delay, approved the project and floated out tender in early 2012. Given the strong working experience in the government sector, HCL Infosystems Ltd bagged the NBA automation project worth around Rs.5 crore.
Development and deployment of IT platform
According to the terms and contract, HCL Infosystems as the IT partner for the project had to develop and deploy IT platform with functional modules as per requirements of NBA along with complete maintenance of IT systems, applications, servers, data centers and disaster recovery (DR) sites.
“NBA wanted to adopt an online IT platform that would simply improve the entire accreditation process and bring all the stake holders on a common platform that brings significant improvement in terms of benefits like efficiency, cost reduction, integration and others,” said Mohammad Salman, Head, EAS Business & Senior Vice President, HCL Infosystems Ltd.
Based on the requirements of NBA, HCL Infosystems has not only developed the IT platform with total office automation solutions, but it had to help initiate green paperless office plan, create multiple channels of interaction with the stakeholders, automate the accreditation and other processes. Along with it, the company had to offer an efficient working platform for NBA employees and associates.
“The time line for the entire project roll out was 11 months, divided over two phases, where the first phase had 6 core modules like application submission, accreditation, conference, meeting, video conferencing and workflow. These 6 core modules were successfully developed and deployed by a 32 member development team. The first phase of the project went live smoothly in February 2013,” informed Salman.
“Overall the project had 17 different application modules, where the remaining 11 modules were completed as per the schedule and went live in May this year. Besides, the entire software application was hosted at the data center (DC)/ disaster recovery (DR) site using cloud platform, ensuring that the system was up and running all the time. Given NBA? requirement of virtual infrastructure, virtual machines have been deployed,added Salman.
From HCL Infosystemsstand point, Salman pointed that though the company has done many projects involving government agencies and departments, the software application modules developed for this project are very unique, custom built and very specific in nature as per NBA’s criteria.
The IT platform is built using Microsoft .NET framework, SQL Server 2008 R2, IIS 7.0 and Windows 2008. The NBA owned data center runs on high-end IBM blade servers. The software solutions included Online Platform for Accreditation Application Process, Conference Management System and Integrated Video Conferencing Platform.
“During the entire development and deployment process, we were in constant consultation and talks with NBA officials and in particular Dr. Paliwal; which actually helped in completing and making the project live as per the schedule,” noted Salman.
Reaping benefits through IT platform
With the successful completion and deployment of IT platform, NBA expecting some major benefits both in terms of monetary and functioning. “We are expecting overall savings of around Rs.4.2- 4.3 crore yearly that would be in terms of cost of paper, space, printing, files, mailing, traveling and saving about 75% time in the accreditation process,” informed Dr. Paliwal.
“Around 14,000 kg of paper will be saved yearly, the AMC will be 20% down due to cloud technology, the overall service time will be up by 90% and it will add efficiency in the day to day functioning and processes of the departments,” he added.
Taking the IT platform to the next level
With the IT platform now in a fully functional mode, NBA is looking to utilize its capabilities for training its associates, providing online lectures through volunteer faculties to students in far remote locations of India through internet and computer device, virtual lectures and online conferences.
“These are some future initiatives which we are in discussion with HCL Infosystems,” concluded Dr. Paliwal.