The government on Monday launched a national online examination system which can be adopted by colleges and universities to make tests hassle-free and more transparent.

"The conventional paper-oriented manual examination system is time-consuming, inefficient and unfriendly to the environment," a statement by the C-DAD quoted HRD Minister Kapil Sibal, who launched launched the system, as saying. "The online examination system will pave the way for a clean, fair, fast and efficient examination and evaluation process," the release said.

The Centre for Development of Advanced Computing's (C-DAC) Director General Rajat Moona said with the use of the system, the time taken from publication of advertisement to declaration of the final results will be around 45 days for large recruitment drives. The system permits candidates to select the date, time slot and venue.

The online examination system has been developed by C-DAC under the sponsorship of the Department of Information Technology. The release said the online system can be adopted by colleges and universities for conducting national-level entrance tests. The system has been extensively tested for more than one year and has been found to be quite robust in performance, Moona said.