Thursday, July 08, 2010
BU, KEA, PU Board used the software: CAG

Bangalore: The report of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India has found several deficiencies in the application of software and computer services by Bangalore University, the Karnataka Examinations Authority (KEA) and the Pre-University Education Department, which affected service to students, incurring loss of crores of rupees to the State Exchequer.

The Information Systems (IS) Audit Report of the CAG, which was tabled in the Legislative Assembly here, revealed that security and controls were inadequate in the software applications developed by entities, and user requirements were not properly assessed. The centralised admission cell (CAC) of Bangalore University used a loose set of programmes based FOXBASE, an outdated software, it said. Though substantial investments were made, the top management in all entities did not recognise the need for formulating IT policies and strategy for orderly development of the information systems. Further, none of the entities had sufficient qualified staff to support IS functions. The CAC and KEA employed contract staff without any technical supervision, the report said.
The software application of the examination wing of the university was not fully developed by the vendor and it suffered many defects which made the software unreliable and necessitated manual interventions for correction of mistakes as a regular feature.

The lack of controls in the software resulted in large-scale mistakes in results and threatened the very credibility of the examination process. Coding and decoding using the software has been introduced only for two of the 296 courses in the university. Continuance of manual coding and decoding before data entry of marks resulted in breach of confidentiality, malpractices and large-scale errors in examination results.

The CAG said the software in the Finance wing of the university was under-utilised due to want of staff.