COMPUTER
The Computer Centre has come a long way since it made a small beginning with only two personal computers in 1989. The Computer Centre is now equipped with local Area Network Operating System with Advance Novell Netware version 3.1 and EISA based 486 as file server and 20 other machines as nodes. The retrieval, updation and processing of data is possible from any system connected to the network providing a multi-user environment. In addition to main Computer Centre and DTP unit, desk computers were provided to senior officers and other functionaries for their smooth functioning and promoting greater efficiency.
New management areas of application During the year, the following new management areas of application were computerised which greatly the operational efficiency of the Organisation :
i) Publication Management A complete Publication Management application software package was developed in-house covering the entire major area of NOS activity comprising of publication of study materials involving about 30 lakh books of 430 titles starting from calculation of print order size for each tide medium-wise, paper requirements, allocations of printing jobs on a rational basis to the printing presses, issue of paper to them, monitoring of supplies of study materials by the printing press- es and finally to their bill processing.
ii) Store Management The store of the National Open School has been completely computerised for consumable/non-consumable items. The software STO- REMGT has been developed in-house which is absolutely menu driven and user friendly. The software has been executed and tested on the current year data along with the manually maintained records. The package provides for the entry of all receipts and issues of items and generates various types of required reports.
iii) Library Management The UNESCO Library Management software CDS-ISIS, has been installed and made operational. A huge database of the total acquisitions of the library will be computerised for the purpose of its smooth management. The software provides a powerful tool for the search of the books through many ways. The acquisition lists can also be taken out.
Services Following major services were delivered during the year:
Admissions May/August/October1994 * For the first time, admissions were done during the year in Bengali medium. Approximately 2,000 students were enrolled in the Bengali medium.
* In-house data-entry, verification and updation of approximately 68,000 students data in the academic and 1,400 students in vocational streams.
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* Checklists and other status reports like medium-wise, sex-wise age-wise,state-wise enrolment of students;
* State-wise reports based on background information like family members,family annual income,parent's education, living environment,house-hold items; and
* Identity cards for each student.
Material Distribution Mailing lists of each study centre were brought out indicating number of candidates in each course, in each subject and in each medium for the Mailing unit for the despatch of study materials separately for each admission;
Examinations
Pre-examinations May/November,1994 During the year, the pre-exam data processing were done for approximately 100,000 students as against 88,000 students only during the preceding year. The data processing of such a large volume of students data includes data entry of examination forms/lists, their verification and updation and generation of various reports being used as centre materials like centre-wise lists of candidates, question paper statements, attendence sheets, subject/date-wise lists of candidates and various such reports.
Post examinations May/November, 1994 *Processing of Result Later(RL) cases and Result Withheld (RW) cases.
*Printing of gazette/mark-sheets/certificate /migration certificates for RL/RW cases and for duplicate cases.
Vocational Examinations June/ December 1994 For the second consecutive year, the result processing was done in-house along with the pre-exam processing for approximately 2,100 vocational students. The activities for pre-exam processing are same as in the academic stream. The result processing procedure covers all the activities beginning from punching of awards to printing of gazette/mark-statements/certificates.
DTP jobs During the year, various new subjects were developed in the vocational streams. The preparation of the camera ready copy of the following vocational subjects was done and got printed :
* Cabinet and Furniture Making
* Word Processing (English) for secondary and senior secondary
* Prawn Fish Farming
* Plant Protection
* jute Production Technology
* Solar Energy Technician
* Biogas Energy Technician
* Water-shed Management
Apart from the new subject development, the composition of all small books, journals, magazines, syllabus,guidelines, prospectus,Open Schooling, annual reports and various other reports were composed.
Mass Production of Letters During the year, mass printing of following letters was done using two fast line printers
* 100,000 intimation letters for May94/Nov-94 examinations;
* Mail-merging a number of letters to all accredited institutions/ examinations centres.
System Management Three tiers of three levels of back-up of application packages and data have been adopted for the proper data management. One in the hard disk,one on the floppy disk kept in the office and one in the floppy disk kept out side of the actual site. All the users have been given a seperate password with restriction to enter in the work area of any other user. As a database administration, passwords of the users are changed on a certain interval of time in order to maintain the security.
System Upgradation In implementation of the perspective plan for computerisation of NOS management, a decision was taken and order placed to upgrade the existing DTP unit and to provide new machines to the various projects/ departments to handle their jobs independently. All existing 386 machines would be replaced by 486 machine in the DTP unit. Two additional Deskjet printers have also been ordered for the DTP unit. One 486 machine is being provided to the Computer Centre as stand-by file server. In addition, orders have also been placed to provide a 486 machine
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with printer to various projects and departments. An order has also been placed for a. note-book computer for the use of the higher authorities particularly when they are on tour.
With the multi-media applications, NOS has the capacity to develop and has developed few presentation packages on NOS itself using the multimedia application tools in respect of sound blaster, scanned images and graphic animations.
Equipped with the latest technology in terms of hardwares and softwares, the Computer Centre was able to achieve high functional efficiency and maintain a fight schedule of several admissions and examination sessions both in the academic and vocational streams with a great degree of accuracy and speed.
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