TN Education dept sites display outdated information, no staff for updation

Even as the State government is aggressively working towards total e-governance, especially in the education sector, with distribution of free laptops to students for several years now, most Education Department websites still display outdated information. While some of them have navigational issues and usability flaws, others are updated only once in few months or even after several years.

In the School Education Department, the website of the Tamil Nadu State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT), the nodal agency that brings out new curriculum and other research activities, besides having outdated information about its officials, does not show any GO issued after 2018.

Adding to the confusion, the SCERT has two websites under the same name and different portals come up when a user searches for SCERT Chennai and SCERT Tamil Nadu in Google search engine.

In the Higher Education department, the Directorate of Collegiate Education, which comprises 12 universities, does not have the latest information with the website still having a 2015 GO as the latest. In the Department of Technical Education (DOTE) website, which also offers various technical courses to engineering and polytechnic students across TN, information on admissions in 2013-14 was the latest update.

Going by statistics given by officials, in 2019 alone, more than 75 GOs were released. However, both the department websites contain only 20 of them. The release of about 10 GOs in 2020 is yet to be updated.

A senior official from the School Education Department, which looks after the websites of his wing, said the government is yet to appoint specific staff for this job. “The updation is carried out only by the existing employees, who are not well trained to take care of web portals,” he said.

Another authority from the DOTE said the government is in the process of appointing data entry operators to update latest information. “We have already received several complaints with regard to the outdated information on our websites. The issue will be rectified once new staff are appointed,” he added.