United Nations Public Service Awards Case Studies

Madhya Pradesh is the second largest State of the India. It has the largest tribal population and has rather poor Human Development Indicators.

School Education with annual budget outlay of nearly 6000 Crores is the largest sector in the State in terms of number of beneficiaries, geographical, number of institutions, engagement of human resources etc. It is also the most complex sector with multiple departments and local bodies exercising control over the manpower engaged in it. Over the last two decades, the workload of the departments, institutions and offices dealing with school education has increased manifold without corresponding increase in the quantity and capability of the supervisory manpower.

The system is managed at State level by several Departments: School Education, Tribal Welfare, Panchayat & Rural Development, Urban Administration. At field level, it is managed by 50 districts, 313 blocks, more than 800 rural & urban local bodies, 4018 Drawing & Disbursing Officers and more than 11,000 Supervisory Functionaries.

The main challenge was to ensure effective governance for 1.15 Lac schools located in nearly 80,000 habitations, 3.5 lac teachers under control of multiple agencies; to proactively provide quality education to more than 1.10 Crore students in government run schools by building in systems of accountability of teachers, regular and transparent evaluation of academic achievement levels of students; for effective, timely and transparent implementation of various schemes and interventions with facilitation for social oversight; to proactively address teacher grievances, and to provide focused attention to areas and institutions that need it the most.

Other major challenges included:
- No reliable system to facilitate effective Implementation of Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 (RTE Act), requires State to
- ensure free and compulsory admission, attendance and completion of elementary education by all children of 6-14 years (nearly 1.60 crore children)
- ensure that all the schools providing elementary education located even in very remote habitations fulfill norms of Pupil Teacher Ratio, Infrastructure and facilities etc.
- Non-availability of a mechanism for transparent & regular monitoring of student’s achievement levels with built in mechanism for accountability of teachers and transparent grading of schools.
- Synchronizing multiple activities of various administrative units under multiple departments was not possible in isolated system of operations
- Lack of a system for ensuring timely dissemination & compliance of Government orders
- Irregular and non-timely payment of salaries to 3.5 Lac teachers.
- Improper maintenance of service records of teachers resulting in hardships to teachers & delay in disposal of establishment related matters.
- Non-availability of a system to ensure regular and effective monitoring of more than 1.10 lac civil works that are being carried out in schools for construction of buildings, additional rooms.
- Non-availability of a proper and reliable mechanism to ensure personalized follow-up of Out–of-school children & Children with Special Needs.
- Lack of common platform to facilitate communication and address diverse needs of different stakeholders, departments.
- No system for ensuring timely dissemination & compliance of orders

What is the initiative about? (the solution)
The Education Portal www.educationportal.mp.gov.in initiative has been designed to automate, streamline and reengineer various processes and functions involved in the governance of the schools, managing beneficiaries, staff and other entities of education system. The portal comprehensively addresses diverse needs of students, teachers, citizens and managers. The initiative has helped in enhancing performance of large & diversified school educator by facilitating proactive, transparent & accountable governance and effective utilization of Human & other resources to fulfill the mandate of involved departments, implementation of RTE Act and spirit of Right to Information Act. Outcomes/Impact HRMS- Online and Integrated HRMS facilitated by the portal is totally unique in terms of its magnitude- coverage of 3.5 lac employees, more than 1.15 lac schools/offices/institutions, 800 different appointing authorities, over 4000 DDOs and 5 key departments of the State, and sheer comprehensiveness of details. Learning Enhancement Program- has resulted in improved outcomes of students. ASER report shows much superior learning outcomes of children in MP as compared to rest of the country. Annual exam results are the best results for government schools in last two decades. Online Village Education Register (VER) - Exhaustive habitation-wise survey is done for identifying the target children for enrollment, enrolled children. The initiative and analytical reports helped in planning the strategies, facilities and infrastructure to ensure the enrollment of all children and resulted in improving the Net Enrollment Ratio (NER). Student Facilitation System –helps in retention, bridging the Gender and Social category gaps. It facilities online collection of demand of assistance like Uniforms, Cycles, Textbooks, Scholarships and its timely distribution. Micro-level tracking reduced the demand of free textbooks and saved crores of rupees. Out of School Children (OOSC) – registration and tracking of the personalized follow-up activities of nearly 1.6 lac OOSC for their mainstreaming. System has helped in reducing the drop outs and the number of OOSC has come down. Expenditure on the mainstreaming of the OOSC has come down drastically despite larger number getting mainstreamed due to the micro level planning and focused interventions and improved monitoring at the individual child level. Children with Special Needs (CWSN) – registration, medical examination, providing diverse need based interventions like Braille books, mobility allowance etc. the intervention has helped in improving the absorptive capacity of expenditure on the CWSN from Rs. 600/- per CWSN to Rs. 1200/- per CWSN.

Who proposed the solution, who implemented it and who were the stakeholders?
Mr. Manoj Jhalani, IAS, Secretary, Department of School Education did a SWOT analysis with department officials and teachers and analyzed the key issues, problems, strengths and shortcomings of the prevailing system of governance, and opportunities and potential threats. Details of the team(s): - Role- Initiative, Conceptualization, Planning and implementation- Sh Manoj Jhalani, IAS, Mr. BR Naidu, IAS, Chandrahas Dubey, IAS Role- Coordination for roll-out & implementation of the project- Sh Neeraj Saxena, Ajit nair, Pankaj Shrivastava, Mahesh Moolchandani, Shekar sarathe, Vaibhav Shrivastava of Rajya Shiksha Kendra Role- Technical Team -System Analysis, Design, development and implementation of the software and project management: Sh. Vinayak Rao, CN Rao, Sh. Sunil Jain, Sh. Sanjay Garg, Sh. Vipin Bose of NIC, Govt of India

Describe how and when the initiative was implemented by answering these questions
a. What were the strategies used to implement the initiative? In no more than 500 words, provide a summary of the main objectives and strategies of the initiative, how they were established and by whom.
In view of multiple users, large number of appointing authorities, controlling departments and huge array of stakeholders and schemes, one required a platform to facilitate interdepartmental collaboration, coordination, seamless integration of activities, and smooth automation of key processes and updation of key information in real-time. This seemed most easily possible through an online application-based, bi-lingual, database driven, dynamic web-portal which also needed to facilitate information based online monitoring, analysis and dissemination of live information in real-time. It was felt that it would not be possible to define the complete requirements & scope of the portal in one go. The needs and requirements would continue to evolve, grow and mature. Therefore, an in-house professional agency was needed to address the changing requirements, provide a continued handholding support and ensure its sustenance. Accordingly, an Education Portal initiative was conceptualized & implemented through National Informatics Centre and the programs & activities with highest potential to improve the governance in school education sector were taken-up. All the concerned departments had to be on board to ensure the effective implementation of the initiative. Therefore, joint instructions were issued by the HoDs and the Secretaries of concerned departments. To ensure support of District Collectors and CEOS of Zilla Panchayats & ensure sustenance of the initiative, instructions from the Chief Secretary were also issued. A multi-departmental project management team at State level and District level was constituted. The teams met regularly to review the progress, address shortcomings and renew the commitment.

b. What were the key development and implementation steps and the chronology? No more than 500 words
The purpose and priority of the initiative was essentially for enhancing the performance of school education sector by facilitating proactive, transparent & accountable governance to fulfill the mandate of the involved departments, goals of SSA, implementation of the RTE Act and spirit of RTI Act and to create online integrated portal as a single destination to address the issues. Considering the large number of employees and schools/institutions and the centrality of HR management for improving the functioning and outcomes of the School Education Sector, an integrated & effective Human Resource Management System through online portal was a key priority. Creation of online and live databases of key-entities of the school education sector & their codification– Departments, Schools, Offices, Institutions, DDOs, appointing authorities, JSKS(clusters), teachers and staff was taken up. Each employee was mapped to a school/office/institution and the pay-bills generation was automated and made online. Subsequently all other application modules were added with seamless integration between all the modules and entities with unique codification for civil works, OOC, CWSN, Urban Local Bodies, Panchayats, Villages, Habitations etc. It was also very important that all the sub-systems and mechanisms must be so designed and implemented that it should be possible for all stakeholders to monitor the compliance of every requirement of RTE Act for each and every school including adherence to PTR norms, subject-group wise teacher norm, infrastructure and facility norms etc. and help the government to effectively plan and implement the RTE Act. All applications that were subsequently added to the portal were seamlessly integrated and their process data is being mashed to generate the intelligence reports required for proactive governance. Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) exercise was also taken-up wherever found necessary for the successful implementation of the project. - Govt. of MP has issued orders making it mandatory to use the Portal for various process and functions including the generation of the pay bill of the employees. Department of Finance has directed all the treasury offices to accept only those pay-bills that are generated through portal. - Use of Unique ID issued by Portal has been made mandatory for all administrative purposes. - Creation and implementation of online e-service book has taken-up A multi-departmental project management team comprising of Secretary, School Education Department, Commissioner Public Instruction, State Project Director (SSA), Commissioner (Tribal Development), NIC representative at the State level and District project management team comprising of DEO, DPC, Assistant Commissioner (Tribal Welfare) and Programmer (SSA) was constituted. The teams met regularly to review the progress, address shortcomings and renew the commitment. Capacity Building Plan for sustained implementation: District SSA programmers, data entry operators were developed as project resource persons for 50 districts and at 313 blocks. Continuous Trainings and retraining have been/are being provided to all the users to use the system effectively to minimize their work load and improve their work efficiency and effectiveness. Workshops/Trainings were/are also conducted through Video Conferencing & EduSat facility Since its inception, the portal has bagged five prestigious awards--Best e-Governance Project Award by PC Quest (Leading IT Magazine), Gold Icon National E-Governance Award of Government of India, Best Project under IT for Masses category of Government of Madhya Pradesh, CSI Nihilent E-Governance Award and the Manthan South Asia E-Governance Award.

c. What were the main obstacles encountered? How were they overcome? No more than 500 words
The project required the involvement and wilful support of multiple users, large number of appointing authorities and controlling departments. All the concerned departments were brought on board to ensure the effective implementation of the initiative. Joint instructions were issued by the HoDs and the Secretaries of concerned departments. To ensure support of District Collectors and CEOS of Zilla Panchayats & ensure sustenance of the initiative, instructions from the Chief Secretary were also issued. A multi-departmental project management team at State level and District level was constituted. The teams met regularly to review the progress, address shortcomings and renew the commitment. It was felt that it would not be possible to define the complete requirements & scope of the portal in one go. The needs and requirements would continue to evolve, grow and mature. Therefore, an in-house professional agency was needed to address the changing requirements, provide a continued handholding support and ensure its sustenance. Accordingly, the initiative was conceptualized & implemented in-house by through National Informatics Centre, Govt of India agency.

d. What resources were used for the initiative and what were its key benefits? In no more than 500 words, specify what were the financial, technical and human resources’ costs associated with this initiative. Describe how resources were mobilized
In view of failure of large number of e-governance initiatives involving substantial investments, it was felt that the Project should not entail initial expenditure on procurement of costly hardware, data centers, software licenses, software development, procurement of clients etc. The portal was designed, developed and hosted in-house by National Informatics Center, a Govt of India organization. No additional investment was made on the procurement of hardware or hiring of additional manpower. The application requires a low-end PC with browser and Internet Connection and does not require any costly hardware and upgrades. User can also use Linux based computer systems or use public internet kiosks for using the services of the portal. The project uses the existing infrastructure and manpower. The project involved managing, coordinating and synchronizing multiple administrative units under multiple departments such as School Education, Tribal Welfare, Department of Panchayat, Urban Administration. It required high level of motivation, understanding and team-work between team belonging to different administrative departments and offices to conceptualize, design and successfully implement the initiatives in a time bound manner. The team displayed exceptional leadership qualities to set the goals for themselves and achieve the same by successfully coordinating the functionaries of large number of offices/institutions of different departments. Conceptualization, development of methodology, field trails, implementation of such a large system were stupendous tasks and the nominees achieved the objectives by showing rare camaraderie and team spirit. The project has successfully demonstrated that several government departments can work together as a team in a synchronized manner and deliver using the existing resources without wasting government funds.

Is the initiative sustainable and transferable?
Sustainability of the Initiative- The project has been designed and developed in-house, uses in-house resources, and did not involve any capital expenditure on hardware, software, data center and licenses. The application requires a low-end PC with browser and Internet Connection and does not require any costly hardware and upgrades. User can also use Linux based computer systems or use public internet kiosks for using the services of the portal. The benefits to diverse stakeholders, in-house resource and the institutionalization of the system have ensured that the system will sustain and continue to grow. The project is also in the Chief Minister’s priority list and agenda and is personally being monitored regularly by the Secretaries and the HODs of School Education and Tribal Welfare Department of GoMP. Replicability of the project/initiative - This project in its existing form can very easily be replicated by any State. This has been developed in-house free of cost. Almost all states have similar issues relating to RTE Act, 2009, HR management, implementation of RTI Act, 2005 and implementation of SSA interventions. Other State Governments and other departments of Madhya Pradesh have approached the School Education Department for implementing the model in their States/departments. • The initiative has introduced transparency and efficiency in all operations and functions and check on leakages. • The initiative has demonstrated the use ICT as an advocacy tool to bring about reforms in the system Change Management Strategy for sustained implementation - The initiative was designed and rolled out in such a manner that it was politically acceptable and the large number of stakeholders responsible for the success of the initiatives derived tangible benefits for their willful support. The initiative serves their personal and professional interests as most of the HR processes have been linked with the online systems & hence they should want to sustain the initiative. e.g. The online system helps timely payment of salaries, timely resolution of establishment related matters, like regularization, and redressal of grievances and hence all employees are ready to use the system. Online analytical reports help the Government, management at different levels and community to know gaps and shortcomings and guide focused corrective interventions.

What are the impact of your initiative and the lessons learned?
The comprehensiveness and scale of this project is its USP. Initiative is unique considering the fact it is benefiting more than 1.10 crore students, more than 1 lac out of school children, more than 1 lac children with special needs, more than 3.25 lac teachers and involves governance in 1.15 lac schools located in more than 80,000 remote habitations. Interoperability amongst multiple departments on-the-fly in real time makes this project Unique and complex. This is the first instance of such a portal by any of state governments. The project has successfully demonstrated that several government departments can work together as a team in a synchronized manner and deliver using the existing resources without wasting government funds. Transparency– The portal is also unique in fulfilling the intentions of RTI Act 2005 in a most comprehensive manner by facilitating online dissemination of all the information related to governance, key processes and entities to common public thereby enabling public scrutiny, oversight and social audit. Proactive Governance - Online mashing and analysis of the transaction data related to various entities and processes generate several analytical reports that are being used for forecasting the problems and issues in the initial stages and help the departments in taking timely preventive/corrective action. Some of such reports are as under - List of Zero regular teacher schools, under-staffed schools, over staffed schools - List of habitations that do not have a school, Or have more than one/two schools - List of teachers that are likely to be engaged in non-teaching functions, - List of teachers whose salary is not being prepared, Grievances are pending - List of Schools showing poor academic performance in monthly tests, need guest faculty, schools where monthly tests are not being conducted, schools where the students are likely to drop out, schools that have not been inspected since a specified period. On the basis of these reports, it also generates list of schools that need to be visited and inspected by district authorities. - Provides information to proactively address all establishment related issues of entitlements etc. e.g. cases of time-scale fixation, pay fixation, regularization, pension etc. that are due, - Facilitates rationalization of teachers subject-wise, subject group-wise based on students enrollment as per RTE norms and State Norms for secondary schools, - Correct forecasting for ensuring proper & timely recruitment of teachers on the basis of need of teachers subject-wise & on basis of enrollments in schools in compliance to RTE Act 2009, - Schools were problems were reported in inspections, follow-up action is pending - List of OOSC/ CWSN that have not been followed-up for mainstreaming/not yet been examined for medical evaluation or have not been provided assistance and equipment.


Institution Name:		MP School Education Tribal Welfare Department, NIC
Institution Type:		Government Department
Contact Person:		Manoj Jhalani
Title:		Mr.
Telephone/ Fax:		91-0755-2768392
Institution's / Project's Website:		91-0755-2552363
E-mail:		manojjhalani@gmail.com
Address:		Rajya Shiksha Kendra , Bhopal
Postal Code:		462002
City:		Bhopal
State/Province:		MP
Country:		India

The Problem

Solution and Key Benefits

Actors and Stakeholders

(a) Strategies

(b) Implementation

(c) Overcoming Obstacles

(d) Use of Resources

Sustainability and Transferability

Lessons Learned

Contact Information