Friday, May 26, 2017

eSanad should become eSa-NAD

Recently the HRD ministry along with NIC launched a portal for online verification of educational documents. The initiative is titled eSanad, and CBSE has already joined in.

Read more here:

http://indianexpress.com/article/education/cbse-nic-in-cbse-launches-esanad-for-online-mark-sheet-result-document-verification-4671572/

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/education/story/cbse-nic-in-cbse-esanad-for-online-mark-sheet-result-2017/1/961949.html


The name "eSanad" could be a coincidence but there is no reason why this should not become eSa-NAD. I am of course referring to NAD (National Academic Depository), which is intended to store the educational records of all students. A few thoughts:

1) Government entities have demonstrated the ability to host and manage large amounts of personal confidential information (UIDAI is an example). There is no reason to believe that a Govt entity wont do a good job of managing an Academic Depository (for one, the data will be much lesser, and lot less sensitive).

2) The Govt (HRD / IT Ministries) could frame rules requiring all Depositories under NAD to share / backup the data they gather with eSanad. This will ensure that verifiers have a single location from where this data can be legitimately accessed, rather than having to register with multiple Depositories.

3) CBSE had earlier tried storing their records with the Depositories (NSDL / CDSL). They have now chosen to go with eSanad - a Government initiative hosted by NIC.

4) To reiterate the point made in an earlier post on the topic of NAD, the eSanad authority should publish APIs (just as UIDAI has done) to enable developers to build much needed applications for document verification.

eSanad will hopefully lead to faster realization of an Academic Depository, and put an end to the menace of fake educational credentials.



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