The National Council for Teacher’s Education (NCTE) is going electronic for all its regulatory functions. The statutory body is in charge of recognising teacher training institutions in India, and is currently in charge of 16,000 training institutes that train close to 1.3 million teachers every year. NCTE performs four regulatory functions: recognition of institutes, its withdrawal as and when necessary, appeals against rejection and permissions for extension in already recognised institutes. “Though the entire application process is now online, they are not e-processes in the true sense of the word,” R Jaya, member secretary, NCTE, told Governance Now.

The regulatory body wants a software-based platform that will give an end-to-end solution to fill up this gap. The request for proposal (RFP) for the software, called e-regulation, has been floated. “We aim to complete the process by March 2014. The move will greatly streamline the processes of the council,” said Jaya. The proposed software is also expected to send a Letter of Intent (LOI) after submission of successful inspection report of an institute.
Inspection forms an important part of the regulatory functions of the NCTE. It is also prone to corruption because of the high chances of collusion of inspectors with institute owners.

To reduce the chances of such collusion the software will randomly assign officers for inspection. The officers would have to upload the inspection report within a stipulated period of time, which cannot be extended. In case the officer fails to do so, the council would assign a different officer for inspection.

Once an officer has agreed to our dates for inspection, there will be no change. The reports would also have to be submitted within a given period after the inspection,” said Jaya.  The withdrawal of recognition is another area prone to malpractices as a withdrawal decision can be overturned on the basis of a satisfactory inspection. While physical inspection is mandatory and the council cannot do without it, the processing of the inspection report would be done through the e-regulation software. “Any fraud missed once, will be surely unearthed in the periodical inspections,” said Jaya.

The law also mandates the process of mandatory and periodical inspection of teacher education institutes. However, the large number of institutes combined with the lack of dedicated staff to conduct inspections results in a lot of slippages. “The software will be designed in such a way that it can throw up the names of the institutes where an inspection is needed the most,” added Jaya. This automation will make sure that institutes are not left untouched from the process of inspection and do not thrive in anonymity. The applications for appeal against rejection of recognition would also go through ‘e-regulation’. The software would receive the application and also set the agenda for the meeting of the appeal committee. It will also allow the committee members to write the notes and analysis on the proceedings of the committee, thereby reducing both time and paper work taken to arrive at a decision. “The anomalies would be thrown by the computer which would save large amount of time in going through files to decide the reasons for rejections,” added Jaya.   

The software would also generate alerts for approaching deadlines for inspections or other communications. This would introduce efficiency in the office, as officers would have no reason to miss important activities. The e-regulation software would not only help the council in streamlining its regulatory functions but would also help the applicant institutes by reducing the time it takes for applying for recognition. The software would allow the applicant to check the status of his application online thereby reducing his trips to the council offices (central as well as regional).

After putting all its regulatory features in the e-domain by March 2014, NCTE also plans to integrate functions like accounts, attendance, leaves and other establishment and administrative functions on the e-domain. For this purpose, it aims to hire a number of contractual employees to develop and integrate these applications. In a course of time, the council is planning to develop a full-blown Electronic Data Processing (EDP) unit according to a task force recommendation for organisational restructuring. “If all goes as planned, the council will be 50 per cent paperless and 100 per cent more efficient by mid of next year,” said Jaya.

(This story appeared in the November 16-30, 2013 print issue)