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Starting 2017, all academic records in the country will be available in digital format.
The Central government has announced that from next year all academic awards will be digitised for secondary through tertiary-level institutions and that it will engage the services of NSDL and CDSL. The national academic depository (NAD) will hold degrees, diplomas, mark sheets.
On Friday, the Central government announced its intention to henceforth digitize all academic records for secondary through tertiary-level institutions and that it will engage the services of National Securities Depository Ltd (NSDL) and Central Depository Services Ltd (CDSL) for implementing the decision.
Notably, this initiative was announced by the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) almost 5 years ago. Digitisation will enable smoother background checks on job seekers or on candidates seeking to study further besides addressing academic frauds.
“It will be a reality soon and will be beneficial for all stakeholders. NSDL and CDLS will work on this,” said HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar.
“All educational institutions, including universities, will implement the scheme. It will be hugely beneficial for students,” the minister said.
The digital academic depository will be called the National Academic Depository (NAD) and will be similar to the security depositories.
Javadekar said that taking a cue from the security depositories which have made it possible to safeguard the wealth of investors inspite of financial securities in the demat form; the academic depository will similarly work with the academic records in the country.
The national academic depository (NAD) will hold degrees, diplomas, mark sheets, migration certificate, skill certificate, etc. in digital format.
The Higher education secretary said once the records will be digitised and registered in the depository they will be shared with potential employers for background screening or any other stakeholder only after the explicit permission of the student.
For some time now the corporate sector has been facing problems of increasing academic frauds in job applications. The national depository will now assist them in providing verified academic records by paying a nominal fee.
A study conducted by an international screening company, First Advantage, revealed that the year 2015 saw the highest number of discrepancies in job applications compared to the previous 5 years with approximately 11.5% job-seekers submitted false data.
Besides verification, tagging the academic records along with the Aadhaar number of the candidate to facilitate e-KYC and retrieval is also on the cards.
The HRD ministry has said that the NAD will commence operations from 2017 with the 2016 academic records as its base and from the next academic year, the government will make sure that all institutions and school boards issue digitized certificates with digital signatures to facilitate the process.
Integrity of the NAD data will be the responsibility of NSDL and CDSL.
The onus of registering the data with the depositories will lie primarily with the education institutions. However, the process will also be open to the students to login to the NAD and enter their previous academic records in the system and link it to their Aadhaar number.
Read the original story by Prashant Nanda at www.livemint.com