The Need

Every year thousands of students and their parents stand in long queues at public colleges across Punjab to complete the admissions application process. The process traditionally remains hectic, time consuming and costly for students and their families who have no other option but to take time off from their work.

The Punjab Gateway Project of government of Punjab was approved in July 2010, as a key initiative to enhance Government to Citizen (G2C) and Government to Government (G2G) online services, in priority areas including, Education.

The Higher Education Department (HED) of Punjab identified, student admissions to the government colleges as an important citizen service, where technology interventions could make the application process convenient for applicants, their parents, as well as college administrators.

Punjab IT Board has worked closely with the Higher Education Department, to provide a web-based system that enables applicants to apply over the internet for admissions in government institutions of Punjab.

A comparison of the traditional application method and OCAS is shown below:

 

Traditional Method		OCAS
Queues Paper application forms need to be collected at college premises, filled out, and deposited again at the college manually.		No Queues Applicants can apply from anywhere (where an internet connection is available).
Error-prone Entry All information needs to be filled-in by hand. Verification has been done manually. Colleges tabulate manual forms, and therefore, add yet another error-prone step in the process.		Minimal Data Entry OCAS works with the softcopy of matriculation data provided by the 9 BISEs in Punjab, minimizing the amount of information that the candidate has to fill-in, thereby, minimizing data errors.
Single location for fee payment Application fee has been deposited at the college.		Pay at any BoP Branch Applicants can deposit application fee at any branch of Bank of Punjab across the country.
Cumbersome application tracking Applicants have to physically visit colleges to find out status of their applications.		Online Application Status Applicants can see the status of their applications online.
Merit list at College Merit lists are posted in most cases, on college premises, requiring applicants to physically visit the campuses to find out if they are admitted.		Online Merit list Availability Applicants can view merit lists online on the portal.