The government has tightened the norms for procurement of IT equipment in schools and offices of the General Education Department. The existing set of guidelines have been comprehensively revised in a bid to ensure transparency and prevent ‘dumping’ of unnecessary and costly equipment in schools using public funds.
The revised guidelines, which pertains to the utilisation of government, MP, MLA and local self-government institutions’ funds, specified the maximum prices, minimum specifications and service conditions that had to be complied with while deploying IT equipment to schools.
The guidelines have been released by approving the recommendation of the technical committee of the General Education Department.
The prior approval of the State Council Educational Research and Training (SCERT) and Kerala Infrastructure and Technology for Education (KITE) has been made mandatory for allocating digital contents or digital libraries to schools. Besides, proprietary software or applications will not be deployed to schools.
The new set of rules necessitated the allocation of laptops in schools after assessing their portability, power backup and minimal power consumption features.
The distributors will be required to demonstrate the working of the equipment before the head master and IT coordinator at the time of their delivery.
Call centre number
The firms which deploy the equipment should ensure the availability of call centre number and web portal address for registering the complaints. The complaints thus reported will have to be attended within two days and closed within five working days, failing which a penalty of ₹100 per day will be imposed on the supplier.
The schools has also been tasked with displaying the list of equipments received under each scheme, year and their source of funds. They will also have to strictly adhere to the Cyber Safety Protocol. There should not be any activities in schools which capture or share the personal details of students, store or host them in private servers.
The required equipment can be purchased through KELTRON, the rate contract agency that has been identified by the government. Some permitted equipments can also be procured through the Centralised Procurement and Rate Contract System of the IT department
Stock register
KITE will develop an Online Stock Register for all schools and institutions under the department. The agency will also undertake specific IT Infrastructure Audit in all schools and institutions under the department. The audit will be initiated in October, K. Anvar Sadath, Vice Chairman and Executive Director, KITE, said.
