COSMOS

The Chhattisgarh Online School Monitoring System (COSMOS) comprises of Android based tablet to record and monitor school data in real time. The tablet is equiped with a finger print reader to take biometric attendance of teachers and other staff at the school. Unlike a traditional biometric system, COSMOS is an integrated system which encompasses other services requisite for efficient working of teachers and admin staff. It is emerging as a comprehensive solution for the education department to efficiently monitor and control school level information in real time. The data is stored online at the central server and can be accessed from any remote location. It has helped check the presence of teaching staff & other staff at school accurately and in transparent manner without depending on legacy system of registers and paper reports. At the 19th National e-Governance Conference, the COSMOS project won the National Awards for e-Governance, 2015-2016 in the category of excellence in Government process-re-engineering.

The initiative started from Rajpur block in Balrampur district in 2014 whereby all requisite hardware and training to teachers regarding the standard operating procedures for usage and maintenance of the system were provided. The system had inbuilt functionalities to establish communication channels for non-teaching and administrative works. It allowed teachers to communicate with district authorities for their administrative and personnel issues such as application and sanction of leaves, etc. Gradually, teachers started adopting this system and took ownership as it was for their own benefit. As a result more and more teachers started recording their attendance and their physical presence at school also increased. Seeing the success of the initiative, from 1st May 2015 it was further expanded to all remaining blocks of the district.

Way Forward

Learning lessons and the short-comings which have been rectified during the implementation of COSMOS in Balrampur district and the fact that the project brings ‘Return on Investment’ in a short amount of time, it is of utmost need to implement it at the state level. The Chhattisgarh State Govt. proposes to undertake the Balrampur initiative for scaling up across other 26 districts in an integrated stateof the art IT solution.

The scaling up initiative will enhance the school management system resulting in learning potentials and to create a lasting positive impact in learning levels of children of government schools. The idea is to make available the fruits of advancement in ICT and other related technologies to the field of education. The envisaged size of the scaling up covers 48,758 schools, approx. 2.43 lakh teachers and approximately 60 lakh students. It is estimated a duration of three years of implementation and adoption cycle for state-wide rollout led by a PMU (Project Management Unit) under the leadership of CHIPS for effective implementation and management.

Advantages and Scope of (Chhattisgarh Online School Monitoring System)

The project has greatly reduced paper-work and administrative hurdles in the day-to-day functioning of the schools, as tasks like teacher’s leave application, online reporting of information related to delivery of various schemes all can be done sitting at the school premise. Some of the major modules and benefits are detailed below:-

COSMOS will reduced time and efforts often wasted by teachers in non-academic administrative work, tracking academic progress of each child – thus improving efficiency of teachers giving ample time for teaching learning processes with students. The system will also help in monitor daily activity of each school in the district and monitor the utilization of fund granted, thereby minimizing misuse.

Savings from this project

The initiative will save a lot of government money by stopping pilferages & leakages in the system and improving efficiency of people and processes. The COSMOS implementation at state level will greatly impact several schemes implemented at school and has potential to save money from distribution of uniforms, books, scholarships, Mid-Day Meal and teacher salary.