Maharashtra: Now, software to decide transfer of zila parishad teachers; roll out on June 30

“The transfers of zila parishad teachers will now happen through a software. There will be minimum intervention of an official. Mostly, the intervention will be limited to grievance redressal of correcting information,” said zila parishad CEO Ayush Prasad told The Indian Express. The transfer plan will be rolled out from June 30.

The teacher transfer software is unique as it provides a platform to the teachers, without any authority’s intervention, to seek and get transferred on the basis of a set of rules, officials said. These rules have been decided as a government resolution after extensive consultation with over 20,000 teachers and leaders of 757 unions claiming to represent teachers, said officials. As many as 102 experts from 34 zila parishads have verified if the software is exactly as per the government resolution.

“Once launched, the software will automatically identify teachers due for administrative transfers or eligible to request for transfers. The data of teachers is fully visible to every other teacher. There is a process of social audit. Every click made by every teacher is logged and is made available to the teacher for complete transparency. There is no scope for third party modification of data. The decision on the posting of teachers is not made manually but by the software, strictly as per the rules,” a statement said.

Zila parishad officials said the State Level Committee for the Online Transfers of zila parishad teachers met at Pune to review the progress of software development, results of user testing and planning for roll out of the transfer process. The committee consists of three Chief Executive Officers of Zilha Parishads — Ayush Prasad (Pune), Dr Sachin Ombase (Wardha) and Vinay Gowda G C (Satara).

The committee found that of the three phases of the software roll out, two are fully developed and have been tested. “The committee decided to send the software for a third party security audit as per contract and industry standards,” the statement said.

“The third and final phases have also been programmed. User testing is being conducted now. Certain nuances such as what is to be done if there is a pending matter in the court was discussed and decided upon,” officials said.

“The review of data quality revealed that about 17,000 teachers have submitted incorrect data such as duplicate phone numbers, mismatch in Aadhaar numbers, mistakes while filling service data etc. Each district has been informed. However, this is only five per cent of the total number of teachers. It is not a big issue,” said Prasad.

“The cloud integration of the software is nearly complete. Only the load balancer required for 25,000 concurrent hits is being designed. A 1 GBPS dedicated line would be provided for fast services,” the zila parishad said in a statement.

“The software is highly complex due to the number of special exemption clauses. The software automates the process of teacher transfer, therefore it not only has to collect data but also take a decision of posting teachers on the basis of the data,” the statement explained.

Officials said it is for the first time in eGovernance that a complex decision making has been automated and given to a software system. “Usually, automation is limited to data validation. The extensive eGovernance is for collection and storage of data; and to facilitate decision making by authorities, rather than actually taking the decision by the software. But in this case, the role of the officers has been limited to resolve grievances with regard to disputes over data submitted and initiating the transfer process. This project would give a new direction to governance through the digital mode.”