Increased Transparency in the Education Sector through Open Data

Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Have we all not wondered what is happening at the back end of each project that we witness? PITB has provided a solution! The Government of Punjab has taken the initiative to make the data obtained through monitoring easily accessible to the public. This has already been implemented in the education sector.

Initially, the conventional regulatory proceedings included 950 monitoring officers across Punjab in which Performas were filled out, and these paper based reports were submitted to district through which annual reports were then generated. Doesn’t sound too real time?

PITB, in collaboration with the School Education Department, has computerized this entire process to yield more efficient and transparent results. Tablets have been distributed among the monitoring officers. These have been facilitated with geo-tagging and automated form generation applications. The form is automatically stamped with the date, time and area that the officer is present in, making the information valid.

The performance indicators are teacher attendance, student attendance and utilities. The officers now visit the schools in a variety of districts and after simply filling out an automated form, the results of the inspection are available to you.
How? PITB has created an online portal. Previously only high ranked authorized personnel had access to this data. However, a bigger breakthrough has been achieved now and this data has been made public in PITB’s most recent accomplishment ‘Open Data.’

This is an online central dashboard where daily reports from 52,695 schools are submitted and can be viewed by you. The user interface has been made very user friendly. You can plainly log onto http://open.punjab.gov.pk/schools/ and find the location of your school on a heat map.

The daily checking of reports will help improve the education sector and lead to increased transparency. Open Data will lead to better teacher attendance, and a better environment for students to study in, logistically. The government of Punjab hopes to keep improving the education sector.

Transparency is one of the foremost concerns of the government. PITB is determined to couple that with accountability. The next phase of Open Data is aimed at identifying potential false reports submitted by the monitoring officers. This would be achieved by giving you to a platform to comment on the reports that have been made available online. Any discrepancy that you find in the data being displayed for your school can be reported on the portal.

PITB aspires to spreading this Open Data initiative beyond just the education sector to make all sectors more authentic and productive.