Panel examines TSBIE, GTPL failure

Hyderabad: There seems to be more than what meets the eye when taken into consideration the 10-page report on the Intermediate Public Examinations-2019 (IPE-2019) results submitted by a three-member committee appointed by the State government.

The committee has found fault with both the Telangana State Board of Intermediate Education (TSBIE) and the Globarena Technologies Pvt. Ltd., (GTPL) for the Intermediate results fiasco.

However, sources pointed out that due to time constraint or terms of reference set for it, the committee looked only into the internal controls to point out the errors in the execution of the TSBIE initiative to have a complete web-based application suite intended to cover all aspects of design, development and maintenance of its business process.

Speaking to The Hans India, a senior official from the State Higher Education Department (SHED) said that the committee was asked in the reference number 3, to figure out "Whether there are enough checks and balances to detect systemic mistakes in time."

Accordingly, the committee went into the issue and pointed out several inadequacies in the implementation process of the project life cycle of the entire information technology initiative of the TSBIE intended to manage its affairs.

In doing so, the committee confined itself to the examination of internal controls vested with the TSBIE to oversee the project being developed by the GPTL.

However, the committee did not go through an important aspect which acted as checks and balances in the implementation of the IT projects across the State government departments, including the TSBIE.

Giving more details on the issue, the sources pointed out that every government department has a designated official to look after the information technology initiatives.

"He acts as a one-point contact for the information technology, electronics and communications department (ITE&CD).

It also looks into the intent, objectives, timelines, progress, status and other issues like technologies opted for the implementation of such projects during the review with its point of contacts designated across the department," the source said.

Adding, the main objective of these periodic reviews is that the ITE&CD acts as a nodal agency to oversee the implementation of the entire e-Governance ecosystem of the State government.

"These reviews are also meant to see that the IT projects being implemented by various departments are in sync with the State government's e-Governance architecture.

This is meant to bring interface, by integrating various stand-alone systems and services between the Government-to-citizen (G2C) and government-to-business (G2B).

For example, while the Meeseva and Meeseva 2.0 falls under G2C category, the Telangana State Industrial Project Approval and Self- Certification System (TS-iPASS) falls under G2B categories.

The ITE&CD periodic reviews act as a potential external check and balance over the IT projects being implemented across the departments and across different technology platforms with different degrees of variance in the implementation of the projects.

The committee pointed out the failure of the internal controls within the TSBIE.

But what it had missed out was the delay in conducting periodic e-Governance reviews by the ITE&CD for quite some time leading to the TSBIE IT project not undergone the external scrutiny.