State board to digitise student data from 1965-1990; set up own data centre

Pune: Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education is in the process of digitising all student data from 1965 to 1990. The state board has also decided to host all its data in its own servers instead of rented servers, said Trigun Kulkarni, chairperson of state board."The data post 1990 is already available digitally. But all the data prior to 1990 has been kept in huge paper registers in our record rooms. The pages run upto 80 lakh and there is always a chance of damage to paper. Secondly, whenever someone applies for a document from before 1990, officials have to go through these physical records to verify which is time consuming for both the official as well as the applicant," said Kulkarni speaking with the media at the state board headquarters in Pune on Tuesday.An agency will be selected by the board to scan all the pages and upload it in a secure Document Management System (DMS). "It will take about 6 months to scan the entire documents and we are trying to get it done through CSR so that the board doesn't have to spend any money," said Kulkarni.For a long time, the state board has been hosting data on rented servers. "This costs money and there is always a security concern. Hence we have decided to have a data centre within the state board headquarters. Data after 1990 is already digitsed but it is not in DMS, which needs to be done. Once the work is completed, we will have all the data centrally at the headquarters instead of keeping divisional data only at the divisional centres. We are targeting to complete all this work within a year's time," added Kulkarni.