Arun C Mehta
Formerly Professor & Head
Department of Educational Management Information System
National University of Educational Planning & Administration (NIEPA), New Delhi
(E-Mail: acmehta100@gmail.com & WhatsApp: +91 98681-84981)
Background
It is mandatory for each district of
the Country to formulate Annual Work Plan and Budget under the aegis of
the recently launched integrated School Education programme, namely the Samagra
Shiksha which was also true for the previously launched nation-wide Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (Elementary Education
for All) programme. The concept of developing district plans was initiated
during the World Bank assisted project, namely District
Primary Education Programme (1994-95 to 2000-01) under which 272
districts across 18 states were covered. District Annual Plans are supposed to
be appraised first internally at the state level which is in turn appraised by
a team of Consultants at the Technical Support Group of Samagra Shiksha at the national level after which
the same is submitted to the Project Approval Board for appraisal, approval,
and release of the funds (in installments) to the State Implementation Society.
District School Education Plans are supposed to be developed by the District
Planning Team by following the plan formulation guidelines but in most of the
districts plans are now being developed at the State level which generally lack
academic flavor as the same in most of the cases is based on the EXCEL Tables
designed by the Technical Support Group of Samagra Shiksha.
Annual Work Plans are exclusively
based on the data generated through the Unified District Information System for
Education (U-DISE)
which was till recently managed (1994-95 to 2017-18) by the apex National
Institute/University of Educational Planning and Administration (NIEPA).
District Information System for Education (DISE) was also initialed under the
DPEP initially for the primary education which was subsequently extended to
first, upper primary (elementary education), and then to the secondary and
higher secondary levels of education and is termed as the most successful and
longest initiative (a collaboration of NIEPA, UNICEF, and Ministry of HRD)
towards strengthening EMIS/Educational Statistics in India. From the year
2018-19, renamed U-DISE+ is being managed by the Department of School
Education and Literacy of the Ministry of Education/HRD technical aspects of
which is being managed by the National Informatics Centre (NIC) located in the
Ministry.
Till recently, it was a practice to
formulate Annual Work Plans based on the current year’s data but the same is
de-railed since the U-DISE has become U-DISE+ or the data collection and
management work under U-DISE is transferred to the Ministry of Education which
is now being managed by National Informatics Centre and Deputy Director-General
located in the Ministry of Education. It is also of importance to mention that
as of February 2021, data collection work concerning U-DISE 2020-21which should
have been initiated as of 30th September 2020 has not yet been
started. Even data for the year 2019-20 is not available (in most of the
states) and none of the set of 14-publications based on U-DISE 2017-18 and more
recent years is made available in the public domain which was a routine
practice till recently when the same was being managed by the Department of
EMIS at NIEPA. Even U-DISE 2017-18 data in the form of Flash Statistics is yet
to see the light of the day (now released in April 2021 without ritual
Foreword & From the V-C’s Desk) but unfortunately, several articles
have been published exclusively based on U-DISE 2017-18 data by other agencies
other than NIEPA and Ministry of Education (formerly Ministry of HRD) and are
available in the public domain (Recent Trends in India: Contractual Teachers by Vimla
Ramachandran & Ganesh Nigam & School Education in India: Data Trends & Policies,
Central Square Foundation)
Given the limitations in the educational statistics which was being managed by the Planning, Monitoring, and Statistics Unit of the Department of Higher Education located in the Ministry of Education, U-DISE was initiated in 1994-95 by NIEPA, New Delhi in collaboration with the UNICEF and Ministry of Education at the time the country launched one of the wide-spread programme concerning primary education with the support of the World Bank, namely the District Primary Education Programme (DPEP). The collaboration between these agencies is perhaps the longest one in the history of educational statistics in India which survived for almost three decades. Initially, DISE was to cater to the need of the primary level of education which was extended to the entire elementary level of education when the country launched another ambitious programme towards achieving the goal of universal elementary education through Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan programme which was launched in 2001.
Further with the RTE and RMSA, DISE Data Capture
Format was modified to meet its requirement but there were two systems, one
DISE, and the other SEMIS because of which there were lots of duplicity and
wastage of resources. From the year 2012-13, by using one unified format, data from
the entire school education, from primary to secondary and higher secondary
levels of education is being collected and since then DISE is popularly known
as U-DISE or Unified DISE and has acquired the status of the Official
Statistics and all the parallel collection of information system in case of
school education in India abandoned. Over the time the quality, sharing,
dissemination, utilization, consistency of data improved but questions used to
be raised about the quality and consistency of enrolment data because of which
in the year 2016-17 an effort was made to collect individual student data on 35
parameters in-sync with U-DISE to generate all U-DISE enrolment tables based on
student information and its very first year, detailed students records of
around 210 million were collected but the whole exercise was discontinued in a
year thereafter for unknown reasons. Because of the recommendations of the NEP
2020, it is heard that fresh efforts are being made to re-initiate the student
data collection.
Below some of the achievements gained through U-DISE at
NIEPA is listed:
Landmark Achievements: U-DISE up to the Year 2017
- Through the concerted efforts, MIS units have been made
operational both at the district and state levels across the country and
are equipped with necessary hardware and software.
- The U-DISE has eliminated data gaps as comprehensive
information on all aspects of school education is now available over a
period of time at all disaggregated levels, such as school, cluster,
block, district, state, and national levels.
- Both the district elementary as well as secondary
education plans are exclusively based on U-DISE data and annual plans were
used to be developed based on the current year data which were submitted
to the PAB for appraisal and approval.
- Liberalization of data to ensure that data reaches all
data users in a user-friendly mode. A separate online channel was devoted
to easy hassle-free downloading of the data and online generation of
reports as per the requirement of users on hundreds of parameters.
- What is more remarkable about U-DISE is that it has
drastically reduced the time-lag in the availability of educational
statistics, which is now down from 7-8 years to about a year at the
national level, and only a few months at the district and state levels.
- A set of 15 publications were used to be brought out
annually covering both elementary as well as secondary levels of
education.
- School Report Cards of an individual school for the
period 2005-06 to 2016-17 were made available which also includes a rating
of each school based on the 10 RTE parameters.
- Every bit of information collected through the U-DISE
was made available to block, district, and state-level MIS units to ensure
that data is adequately used where the strong U-DISE software having
powerful reporter modules was installed, the officers used to generate all
requisite indicators at their own at their desired levels. The data to
state-level was provided by the block and district level MIS Officials
which has had helped to create ownership and accountability of data.
- U-DISE was being managed by a small team at the
national level with support from the UNICEF and Ministry with an annual
budget of Rs. 10 million approximately. All the U-DISE websites were
hosted in-house in NIEPA for which a special data center was developed
which was equipped with necessary servers and other necessary equipment.
- For many years, data was cross-checked by a third party
not involved in the data collection and SSA on sample basis sharing of
which was used to be shared with all the stake-holders.
- The web-portal may be very attractive but of not much
use unless the quality of data has been provided by the respondents which
are qualitative in nature. Keeping this in the mind, numerous interactive
programmes to discuss Data Capture Format with the respondents, namely
school headmasters, CRC and BRC Coordinators, District, and State MIS
Officers and other stakeholders were conducted over a period through
EDUSAT which was used to be received by thousand and thousand respondents
from across the country.
- It was an annual major activity to release the data in
a special data release programme which was used to be attained by data
users which have helped immensely in creating awareness about the data.
As has already been mentioned that
U-DISE from the year 2018-19 is being managed by the Ministry of Education
through the NIC, it is hoped that the quality, reliability, consistency,
utilisation, sharing, and dissemination of data from the year 2018-19 from its
2017-18 level will further improve in the year that follows. Before
U-DISE was shifted to the Ministry of Education, there was a proposal for the
national roll-out of Teacher Module as a part of the Extended U-DISE in the
form of Shaala Kosh in May 2018 which was initiated by the Ministry towards
“its efforts to revamp the existing U-DISE system to make it relevant to
today’s educational requirements, this was an attempt to develop a
comprehensive integration of State MIS Systems”. Before Shaala Kosh,
the Ministry also had launched Shala Asmita Yojana (to replace U-DISE)
the task of which was envisaged to be completed by February 2017 but nobody
knows its status? In a letter to all the States & UTs on 29th
May 2018, through Annexure I concerning Shaala Kosh, the following
observations regarding U-DISE are worth to mention some of which are also
documented in the U-DISE+ Booklet produced by the Ministry (https://udiseplus.gov.in/#/Publication)
at the time of taking over U-DISE from NIEPA is briefly presented below:
Quality of Data: “The current system does not incorporate a comprehensive
list of validation checks which results in low data quality”.
Ease of Use: “The current system is offline and employee a pen-paper
format to collect data. This results in yearly data collection exercise which
is time-consuming and has monetary implications”.
Data Usage and Dissemination: “There is huge time-lag between data collection and data
usage. The data is currently collected as of 30th September and is
used next year. This time lag results in usage and stale data and thus inaccurate
decision making. The current system does not provide information to all the
relevant stakeholders”.
Lack of Coordination and
Supervision: “NIEPA lacked the requisite
infrastructure, expertise, and authority for coordinating with officials
of the States and UTs to ensure smooth and timely availability of the
information. Further, the UDISE was being handled in the project mode by a
small team, and data was hosted in a private server rendering it vulnerable”.
Lack of Accountability due to
Absence of Audit Trail: “The
data was uploaded in the system by district/block MIS officials who were
contractual in nature. In many states, the data entry work was totally
outsourced. Hence, there was no clear traceability/audit trail of those who
were responsible for the authenticity of the information provided.” “Transfer of official at the cluster, block and district
levels further compounded the problem as a result of which the data was never
verified. Since there was no accountability, the officials concerned did not
take adequate care to upload consistent and correct data, thereby compromising
the reliability of the UDISE”
Multiple Versions of Data Collection
Software: “Because of the limitations of
UDISE, many states and UTs developed their own MIS systems to collect data
required in UDISE DCF. Therefore at the national level, the Department had to
contend with two sets of data. Thus, over time, the authenticity and utility of
the UDISE gradually decreased and aggregation of data at the national level
became difficult”
Single DCF for all Categories of
Schools: “In UDISE there was one Master
DCF for all schools irrespective of the category. However, many of the fields
were not applicable to a particular category of school. “This created confusion
as a result of which there were instances where the data for the relevant
school category was wrongly inserted. Consequently, the information provided by
the schools suffered from inconsistencies”.
Lack of Verification and Analysis of
Data: “It was mandatory from 2006-07
for all states and UTs to carry out sample checking of U-DISE Data. However,
largely due to the lack of proper guidelines, the verification of the UDISE
data was hardly being carried out. Bulky paper reports were never analyzed and
feedback was not made available to States and UTs.”
It is unfortunate to observe that
even after almost three years of UDISE+, no visible improvement is
observed concerning most of the above observations from its 2017-18 level. On
top of the above, the time-lag which was brought to less than a year at the
national level and only a few months at the block, district, and state levels
have again started to increase. It was said that “the time-lag (under
U-DISE) results in usage and stale data and thus inaccurate decision making”
is now more true for U-DISE+ data. Not only the 2017-18 complete
U-DISE data (15 publications) is yet to see the light of the day but
initiatives made by the Ministry from 2018-19 data collection under U-DISE+
has further increased the time-lag in data. As of date, data collection for the
year 2020-21 has not even been fully initiated (now initiated in April 2021),
and work concerning 2019-20 data is still going on in many states. For two
years, Annual Work Plans through EXCEL Tables under Samagra Shiksha were
continued to be based on 2017-18 data which had no such tradition in the recent
past.
One of the important visible changes which have been observed is the development of a dedicated portal for the U-DISE+ but that itself doesn’t guarantee improvement with regard to the concerns raised for taking over the U-DISE. It was expected that because of the online portal, data-entry will take place from the school but barring a few Secondary and Higher Secondary schools the same couldn’t be achieved simply because only 32.66 percent of the total 1.5 million schools covered under U-DISE+ have had a computer in the school as against 18.73 percent schools having the internet connectivity. Even only 63.43 and 32.70 percent of the total 39,077 Senior Secondary schools have had computer and internet connectivity in school in 2018-19 (see Table 2). The percentage of schools runs by the Department of Education having computer and internet facility is as low as 24.06 and 8.05 percent respectively. About 8,35,488 schools (53.87 percent) out of a total 15,51,000 schools covered under U-DISE+ during 2018-19 are government-managed schools of which 75.94 percent schools didn’t have a computer in school; for all practical purposes they are either dependent on cyber cafĂ© or the Office of the BRC Coordinator where both the internet and computer facility is expected to be available but even these centers in many locations face the problem of uninterrupted (if available) power supply and bandwidth as most of them at these centers still has got access to only 2G connection. In addition, only 73.86 percent of the total 1.5 million schools had electricity connections in 2018-19. Apart from the schools run by the Department of Education, the majority of schools run by the other government departments including the Local Body Department (1,34,882 schools & 37.60 percent having computers) and Tribal Welfare Department (31,435 schools & 8.37 percent having computers) also didn’t have access to computers and internet connection. As it seems without strengthening computer and internet facilities in schools across the country, off-line U-DISE was switched to on-line as a percentage of schools with these facilities over the same in 2017-18 do not show any significant improvement. One can easily understand the plight of states where the majority of schools do not have access to the computer in the schools. Three states, namely Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, and Uttar Pradesh has a total of 5,16,523 schools imparting school education which is 33.30 percent of the total 1.5 million schools covered in U-DISE+ in 2018-19 which also means that one in every three schools in the country is located in these three states but these schools do not have got computer (89.50 percent) and internet (89.72 percent) connection in 9 out of every 10 schools. The percentage of schools with the computer is as low as 6.58 percent in Madhya Pradesh compared to 11.08 percent such schools in Bihar and 12.53 percent schools in one of the most populous states having the highest number of schools in the Country, i.e. Uttar Pradesh. It would be of interesting to know how these schools would have managed data-entry during 2018-19. It is a moot question to know whether they made data-entry in on-line or off-line mode and also the location where data-entry was made and whether they took school records or filled-in paper DCF to a data-entry point i.e. mostly the BRC; thus forfeiting the basic purpose of developing a paperless U-DISE+. Unlike paper authentication (on DCF) by the school and other higher levels in the case of U-DISE, U-DISE+ prescribed on-line verification at each level. It is not known how on-line verification would improve the quality and consistency of data and on what basis block and other higher levels have approved the information submitted by the lower levels in the absence of information on paper? It has also been observed that despite being an online system, schools in most of the locations continue to maintain a hard copy of information fed into the online U-DISE+ system mostly soft copy of which is provided by the state level MIS by downloading the same from a link provided by the U-DISE+ national team.
In most of the other schools, data
entry could take have done by the MIS Official either at the Block or District
level which have had necessitated visit of the respondents i.e. School
Head-Master/Teacher to the BRC Office which might have got access to a computer
with electricity and internet connectivity; thus forfeiting the basic reason of
developing an online paperless system.
The current system (i.e. U-DISE) does not provide information to all the relevant
stakeholders was another observation but far from the reality. The beauty
of the previous form of the U-DISE before taking over by the Ministry was that
every bit of information was available to block, district and state MIS
In-charge/Data-Entry operator on his/her own system which was equipped with the
powerful reporter and consistency check module which in the new arrangement is
completely missing as only limited data now reaches back to the lower levels
which are provided by the national level authorities to state MIS which in turn
reach lower levels. It was routine to generate reports by the district and
block level MIS Officials by themselves by using the U-DISE Software installed
on their terminal that is now made dependent on the higher authorities and feel
handicapped which surely would affect the effective and adequate use of data.
At the time of taking over, it was said that “the current system does
not incorporate a comprehensive list of validation checks which results in low
data quality” even though U-DISE off-line software have had very strong
consistency check modules on hundreds of parameters and was available to all
the MIS staff irrespective of a level in the absence of which it is not known
how the quality of data under U-DISE+ in general and enrolment data, in
particular, would improve.
Dissemination and free availability
of data were some of the strengths of U-DISE. A set of 15 publications were
used to be brought out annually which is now completely discontinued. It is
strange that nobody raises concerns about the missing publications, not even by
the Project Approval Board of Samagra Shiksha. In addition to publications,
users were provided raw data and an online portal to generate tables on
hundreds of variables (2005-06 to 2016-17) which is also discontinued for
unknown reasons. However, a comprehensive data sharing policy is now put in
place which has a lot of restrictions on downloading and use of data.
Department of School Education & Literacy will use pseudo code and
school name rather than sharing the actual U-DISE Code for unknown reasons. The
Department also reserves the right to deny access to any user with or without
any reason? The earlier simple system of data sharing has now been made a bit
complicated which may discourage users than encourage using data. As it seems,
it is the end of liberalization of the use of school education data initiated
in 2005-06 when school report cards were launched. Under the previous U-DISE,
it was a usual practice to share dump of the entire data except for sensitive
data (contact number, email, etc.) to institutional and other data users but
under the new U-DISE+ system full set of data is not being shared and
whatever, data is shared one has to bring it into usable form; thus if 15 users
have been provided data, all 15 users will do the same to make the data usable.
Some of the other concerns raised are deliberated below:
Lack of Coordination and
Supervision: “NIEPA lacked the requisite
infrastructure, expertise, and authority for coordinating with officials of the
States and UTs to ensure smooth and timely availability of the information.
Further, the UDISE was being handled in the project mode by a small team, and
data was hosted in a private server rendering it vulnerable” which is
factually incorrect. NIEPA has got the adequate infrastructure for the smooth
functioning of U-DISE. Yes, the U-DISE at NIEPA was being handled in the
project mode by a small team which was the beauty of the system that was
evolved over more than two decades. Achievements by a small team had always
been applauded at different forums including by the Joint Review Missions of
SSA and RMSA. It is glad that a small U-DISE Team could manage the affairs of
the U-DISE over a period of time efficiently which the present large team
loaded with multiple resources couldn’t deliver as envisaged at the time of
launch of U-DISE+. U-DISE/SDMIS data was never hosted on a private
server. A data center was developed at NIEPA where all the servers are located.
Www.dise.in, www.udise.in, https:student.udise.in
and www.schoolreportcards.in
all are hosted in-house on servers installed in NIEPA. NIEPA doesn’t have the
expertise is a joke of the day as it has got the best-experienced faculty those
who have soiled their hands in playing with the numbers. Is the present
leadership more experienced? It would not be an easy task for any agency to
bring out a set of 15 publications annually. Time will show whether the new
arrangement accepts this challenge or term the existing publications simply not
required (nothing has been published as of now). Will it able to maintain and
update www.schoolreportcards.in
or the same may also not even found useful. Unfortunately, an institution
lacking in expertise was allowed to be engaged for over more than two decades.
Yes, NIEPA doesn’t have authority to directly deal with the States and UTs but
it had never experienced any problem in communicating, coordinating, and
dealing with the states which are evident with the fact that even in the
absence of the letter released by the ministry before the launch of U-DISE
2016-17, it had successfully collected student data of about 210 million which
by no standards is a mean achievement. States treat NIEPA and its Faculty more
seriously than any other institution concerning MIS.
Lack of Verification and Analysis of
Data: “it was mandatory from 2006-07
for all states and UTs to carry out sample checking of U-DISE Data… However,
largely due to the lack of proper guidelines … the verification of the UDISE
data was hardly being carried out. Bulky paper reports were never analyzed and
feedback was not made available to States and UTs.” The statement is
partially correct as this was perhaps one of the weak areas of U-DISE.
Guidelines to conduct random sample checking of data were provided and are
still available at www.dise.in
because of which at one point of time as many as 27 states conducted such
studies and submitted to the national level summary of which was made available
to states and shared which is available in the public domain for five years.
However, momentum couldn’t be maintained in the subsequent years because of
inadequate funds for the same which despite the JRM recommendations, and
repeated requests from the states were never been provided in the absence of
which slowly the number of states conducting such studies declined. Major
findings of studies conducted used to be shared with the states annually (in
July) during the annual conference of MIS Coordinators of both SSA and RMSA. It
was expected that sample checking of UDISE+ data across the country by
an independent agency will soon be initiated but the task of checking of data
is assigned to officers who are part of the system? Is this third-party
verification? But, first let us wait for the full 2019-20 data, which is
already late by more than a year as most of the states have missed the
deadline. Preparation for U-DISE 2020-21 is supposed to be started in September
2020; do states and districts are left with enough time to utilize and analyze UDISE+
2019-20 data? Even if the UDISE data of a year is populated next year, the same
is not expected to be updated from the schools because of which it will be
impossible for U-DISE+ to become real-time data in the real sense. In
the process which is now been adopted, there is no date of reference (i.e.
30th September), it is said that since it is real-time data, no
date of reference is required? This is a departure from being followed over the
last more than 50 years. Was it recommended by Experts or a committee headed by
an expert, were the states taken into confidence, or was just decided by some
individuals without knowing its implications? DISE/U-DISE may be a good case
study to know how an institutionalized well-established project can be
de-railed at the whims of an individual or two without acquiring any responsibility.
Lack of Accountability due to
Absence of Audit Trail: “The
data was uploaded in the system by district/block MIS officials who were
contractual in nature. In many states, the data entry work was totally
outsourced. Hence, there was no clear traceability/audit trail of those who
were responsible for the authenticity of the information provided.” Transferring the U-DISE from NIEPA to the ministry will
make the contractual staff regular? Since the transfer, how many of the MIS
Officials are made regular? Was it because of NIEPA, the MIS staff are
contractual, or because of the SSA Guidelines? Except, in the initial period,
that too only in a couple of states, never the data entry work had ever been
outsourced, totally a false statement. Bihar has outsourced Block Information
Centre with one manpower and one Laptop for UDISE+, others may also have
done similar arrangements for UDISE+ which is mainly because schools are
not equipped to facilitate on-line data entry. “Transfer of official
at the cluster, block and district levels further compounded the problem as a
result of which the data was never verified. Since there was no accountability,
the officials concerned did not take adequate care to upload consistent and
correct data, thereby compromising the reliability of the UDISE” Has the
transfer now been stopped? Data was always supposed to be verified first at the
cluster level by the CRC Coordinator (100 percent) and thereafter at the block
(20 percent) and district level (10 percent). Also, there was a strong in-built
consistency check module in U-DISE off-line software which is now missing in
the new setup. Even a complete reporter module has not yet been provided.
District MIS Coordinators/In-charges have not got access to raw data, unlike
the previous arrangement under which every bit of information along with the
reporter module to generate ‘n’ number of indicators at district and lower
levels were made available. Instead of taking signature (on DCF) at all these
levels, the emphasis is now on authentication at all these levels online, which
is very tiresome for schools that do not get access to computers. Since data
was not fed by the schools onto the online portal, the authentication in most
of the cases is being carried out by the Data Entry Operators at the Block
level which forfeited the basic purpose of developing an online system. Mute
point is to ensure which is key to the quality of data is whether schools have
submitted correct data? Which cannot be assured by taking signatures on-line or
off-line? How many capacity-building programs, like through EDUSAT have been
conducted and how many respondents (HMs, Principals, Head-Teachers, etc.)
across the Country have been imparted training before the launch of the UDISE+?
Single DCF for all Categories of
Schools: “In UDISE there was one Master
DCF for all schools irrespective of the category. However, many of the fields
were not applicable to a particular category of school. … This created
confusion as a result of which there were instances where the data for the
relevant school category was wrongly inserted. Consequently, the information
provided by the schools suffered from inconsistencies”. False statement and
questioned the understanding of those who are engaged in U-DISE+. Yes,
U-DISE had only one DCF unlike 18 DCFs under present UDISE+ and was used
to be printed from the SW for over more than a decade. The previous year’s
data, except enrolment, was printed as per the category of school obtained
based on the lowest and highest class in a school. As it seems officials
engaged now were initially more confused than the respondents i.e. schools.
Printed DCF from SW has had helped immensely in improving the consistency of
data. All the schools were supposed to get 2017-18 populated data under U-DISE+
2018-19 which is not true for schools that are upgraded in between. Despite the
on-line system, the majority of schools got blank printed DCFs which are
expected to adversely affect the quality and consistency of UDISE+ data.
Were the filled-in DCF checked by the CRC Coordinators or being checked online
only? Even at this stage, there is no alternative to the Printed DCF
irrespective of how good schools are equipped with computer and internet
connectivity.
Multiple Versions of Data Collection
Software: “Because of the limitations of
UDISE, many states and UTs developed their own MIS systems to collect data
required in UDISE DCF. Therefore at the national level, the Department had to
contend with two sets of data. Thus, over time, the authenticity and utility of
the UDISE gradually decreased and aggregation of data at the national level
became difficult” False statement, in fact, the quality and reliability as
well as utility of U-DISE data improved with each passing year. What more one
can expect that PAB used to appraise and approved annual work plans based on
the current year’s data which has now been badly missed. The current year’s
plans are no more developed using the current year’s data. Every year by now
states used to submit data which is nowhere true now, we have already missed a
year or two. There is now a gap of a year, 2019-20 data shall be used in
2021-22? In which years work plan? At the national level, states never at any
point in time, submitted two sets of data. It is not because of the limitations
of U-DISE data, states developed their own MIS systems just because of their
state-specific requirements. After the transfer how many states have
discontinued their own MIS systems is a mute question that must be answered. The
majority of the states continues using their MIS systems despite the UDISE+
in place and will upload the data by using the Web Service/API onto the online
portal. Is this an improvement over the previous arrangement? Certainly not!
Previously, we have only one off-line uniform system, now we have more than 25
such systems. States who didn’t have the state MIS system previously are also
now planning (like West Bengal) to develop one such system so that UDISE+ requirements
are met.
It is expected that improvements as envisaged while launching the U-DISE+ will be visible in years that follow concerning time-lag, consistency, utilization, dissemination, sharing, quality, and reliability of data. Not only this, U-DISE+ has to maintained overall achievements of U-DISE which may not be an easy task. It is also hoped that the district planning module developed by NIEPA will be implemented in the real sense, for sure not only based on EXCEL Tables which may be resulted only if all those who are engaged in planning shake hands.
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