Project likely to materialise in 3-4 years
Ramnath N. Pai Raikar
Panaji: The Goa Public Service Commission (GPSC), which recruits desirable candidates for ‘Group A’ posts in various state government positions, would in the future, be assisted by Artificial Intelligence (AI), to set papers for the recruitment tests.
Chairman of GPSC, Jose Manuel Noronha, who retires from the top post this week, after an eight-year tenure, in an exclusive interview to ‘The Navhind Times’ said that he is also the chairman of the standing committee of the body of heads of the state public service commissions, and this body has decided to introduce AI in all types of paper setting, in a big way.
“We are in discussion with the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur and a professor of the institution, Nisheeth Srivastava has already taken the responsibility to help us in this task,” he said, maintaining that human intervention in paper setting would be reduced to minimum, with the project taking another three to four years to materialise.
It was also informed that these papers would be set just before the commencement of the exams, so that there would be no chance for leakage of these papers.
“I am very happy to state that today, GPSC is a well-established institution, which has lot of public support, and of course, its transparency model is well known. Candidates have all the faith and confidence that if they apply for a position in the government, then there will be a fair, transparent and just way of selection. That is the biggest achievement at the GPSC which I have achieved so far,” the outgoing GPSC chairman stated, pointing out, “And then there is the Computer Based Recruitment Test (CBRT) that we have introduced during my tenure, which is doing very well and well accepted.”
“I should also mention here that the way papers are set for recruitment in government administration and the way these papers are getting the skill and knowledge out of the candidates, as well as the selection that we do thereafter show that we get the best people for the available posts in government service,” he said.
Speaking further, Noronha said, “If one looks at the candidates recruited in government administration during my tenure – and more than a thousand officers have been appointed during these eight years in various departments, that is approximately 150 per year – then it is a pleasure to see them working with such competency.”
“Another matter of pride is that all of these officials are local boys and girls, which proves that Goans have talent and if given an opportunity of selection through a transparent process, they can shine in any field,” he said.
The GPSC chairman said the Commission receives 3,000 to 4,000 applications for the junior scale service exam, for say recruiting technical officers, and the CBRT requires computers to conduct the related test. “Now all the government colleges in Goa, where we conduct the CBRT, together do not have computers numbering more than 2,500. Therefore, we need to do pre-screening of all these candidates, so that they are grouped into batches of say, 400 each, and can answer the pre-screening tests,” he said, pointing out, “And then the qualifying candidates can answer a common paper, and get short-listed after the test so that they could be called to answer interview.”
Speaking about the introduction of Staff Selection Commission (SSC) by the government, Noronha said the SSC can learn a lot of lessons from the GPSC, although both don’t have any link; the GPSC being a constitutional body, while the SSC a statutory one. “The SSC can go to our website and see all our old papers, the marking system, the results, and the grievance mechanism, and if they wish they can always come to us for help,” he said.
Furthermore, Noronha observed that there exists a world beyond government jobs, as the government cannot provide employment to everyone. “However, this demand for government jobs increased manifold after the corona pandemic, as during the pandemic, people in a lot of private enterprises lost their jobs, faced salary cuts or had to work from home as against those in government service facing no such situation because the government is in the business of doing welfare of the people and needs employees to work on the field,” he said, mentioning that people are viewing government job as a safe and secure employment, and their attitude towards government job has changed after the pandemic.
“Nevertheless,” the outgoing GPSC chief said, “the private sector, on the other hand, would probably be making available jobs more of a different nature, like say, engineers in IT sector or in AI field, super-specialist doctors, and so on.”
“Such people will have more opportunities in private sector,” he said, stating that it is up to the candidates to decide where they want to be, in technology or in administration.
On a parting note, Noronha said that in retrospection, he is satisfied with having a good tenure in which the GPSC has been established as a body of repute.