Breaking new ground to help civil services aspirants easily locate their examination centres and figure out the best commuting alternatives available to reach the centre on time, the Rajasthan Public Service Commission (RPSC) has come up with an innovative solution, writes Akhilesh Mittal, Additional Director IT&C, Department of Information Technology & Communication, Government of Rajasthan, Additional Charge of RPSC & BSER Ajmer.
Akhilesh Mittal, Government of Rajasthan
India is at an inflection point marked by technologies redefining the way we access government services and information; travel across our cities and beyond; locate destinations and interact with different social groups. The Government of Rajasthan has shown through its various initiatives a great will to transform the governance landscape in the state by assimilating technological advancements in its planning and implementation processes.
As part of its vision to use Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for deeper citizen involvement, the Rajasthan Public Service Commission (RPSC) has come up with a number of citizen-centric initiatives that are not only convenient but also futuristic.
Also Read: What is e-Governance ?
Centre Trace – GIS-based Exam Centre MAP
The objective of Centre Trace is to provide candidates the information regarding exam centres’ allotment during Rajasthan Public Service Commission (RPSC) conducted exams. Initially launched for candidates taking online exams, the project aims to provide a detailed map view of the examination centre along with its distance from the nearby bus stand or railway station.
Besides candidates, other users can also view the exam centre information and its location within a district. the Rajasthan Public Service Commission now plans to extend this facility to candidates appearing for offline examinations as well. For this, necessary linking with Rajdharaa GIS platform of the State Government is undergoing for the required geo tagging of the RPSC examination centres.
Exam Centre Management System
Exam Centre Management is very crucial for conducting RPSC examinations in timely and effective manner. Every time RPSC conducts an exam, it needs to check the availability of examination centres along with their capacity to conduct the exam. Before generating roll numbers and admit cards of the candidates, the commission usually collects the information regarding availability of exam centres and their capacity through district coordinators via email, which is a time consuming process.
RPSC also needs to process various payments/bills for conducting examinations along with ascertaining the manpower to be allotted for conducting exams, which at present is done manually through email. To further expedite these processes, RPSC is developing an online portal to receive all the information online along with allotment/selection of examination centre for conducting the exam. The processing of various bills and payments and manpower deputation to conduct examination will also be integrated with the exam centre management system so that end-to-end solution could be deployed.
e-Library/Digital Library
RPSC has also undertaken innovative steps to provide e-Library/Digital Library. For this, the commission is coordinating with the National Digital Library, Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration (LBSNAA), Mussoorie and other institutions to create a common digital platform to ensure availability of e-resources, newspapers (print), magazines (print and online) and journals to all including RPSC officers, experts, and various other officials who play an important role in the examination process.
Official portal and examination process to be more accessible for the differently-abled
Today, it is essential to have systems and processes that are accessible to differently-abled persons. RPSC plans to achieve this by making processes smooth, transparent and accessible as per their needs.
The commission believes that its web portals and examination process must be accessible to provide equal access and equal opportunity to people with different abilities. The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 also mentions easy accessibility of websites and content to such people. Therefore, RPSC is working on the following issues to be addressed:
- Alternative Text for Images
- Keyboard Inputs
- Transcripts for Audio
- Use of different elements on web pages for accessibility
- Elements for navigation of pages
- Accessible elements for form fields and select boxes
- Use of digital content for education
- Steps for making exam process smooth and accessible and important recommendation for scribes.
Salient Features
- The map is also printed on the back of admit cards of candidates.
- Candidates can view the location of the exam centre allotted to them on a map, which also contains information about its distance from the nearest boarding points (bus stands/ railway stations, etc).
- Anonymous users can also view examination centre details of a particular district.
- Administrator can view the logs of candidates who have traced their centres.
- Easy to add new centre or update existing ones.
- MIS reporting by administrators for various kinds of information to be extracted regarding candidate location/number of hits/interest toward centre trace application.