Degrees, diplomas, certificates and marks cards are the crucial link between educational institutions and academic institutions. They authenticate educational qualifications or skills attained by an individual for hiring of required personnel by industries and institutions. For nearly two centuries, both students and the employers have depended upon original hard copies or their typed versions verified by authorised officials as proofs of their attainments. Photocopying eased the rigour a bit some four decades ago. Their loss, theft and spoilage have been the major moments of nightmare for the possessors.
For employers, fake and forged documents caused worries. Risks have also been involved in their transportation either physically or through known means of transfer such as post or courier. Besides all these, maintenance of old paper-based records is always cumbersome, be it within homes or with institutions.
These worries may be a thing of the past with the creation of an internet-based depository by the Union Government from where these documents can be accessed, seen, authenticated and verified. The University Grants Commission (UGC) has recently set up the National Academic Depository (NAD) where all educational institutions, universities and award-giving bodies can deposit the soft versions of these documents. These will be accessible from anywhere in the world at any time.
The facility is likely to be a boon for a very large body of students and will result in huge saving on time and on expenses involved in copying and transferring them. India has around 55 boards for evaluation of school education at 10th grade level, and hundreds of universities — state, deemed, central and private.
Apart from these, there are institutions of excellence such as Indian Institutes of Technology, Indian Institutes of Management, National Institutes of Technology, Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research and some other centrally funded institutions. Various other ministries also run institutions such as Industrial Training Institutes and other skill-imparting institutes. The various school exam boards themselves issue nearly 3.65 crore documents certifying successful completion of exams and courses and other eligibility assessments.
The NAD is a digital storehouse which besides preserving the documents will ensure that the process of retrieval is flawless, easy and transparent. Besides, the mechanism will be totally transparent. The paperless depository has been conceived on the lines of dematerialisation of financial securities. The National Academic Depository aims at ensuring a credible and convenient mechanism for online lodging, verification and authentication of the academic awards issued by various educational institutions. It also eliminates the risk of forgery.
Digital storage
The NAD operates on online mode, allows lodging of academic awards in digital format; maintains the integrity of access to the database of the awards lodged therein; allows the students to retrieve their academic awards at any time; and, allows the employers and other person with prior approval of the concerned students’ to verify the authenticity of any academic award. While facilitating all these, it maintains confidentiality of the database.
The NAD comprises two interoperable digital depositories, namely CDSL Ventures Limited (CVL) and NSDL Database Management Limited (NDML). These digital depositories ensure hardware, network facilities and software of prescribed quality for smooth and secured operationalisation of NAD. The UGC enters into a tripartite agreement with CVL and NDML on behalf of all the central higher educational institutions, boards and institutions of national importance. Besides the educational institutions, all government entities, banks, employers’ institutions will be allowed to avail of the verifying facilities.
The NAD will register all the educational institutions and individual students based on their Aadhar numbers, and allow all academic institutions to upload the academic awards issued by them and allow them to link these degrees, awards and certificates to individual NAD accounts of students.
It will allow students to download and print an authenticated copy of the uploaded documents. Employer institutions who wish to verify these documents can get these done by paying a nominal fee in quick time. The NAD will train the educational institutions in training their personnel in the uploading and retrieval of the certificates.
The creation of the NAD is a huge advance towards easing the pain of the students seeking admissions, applying for jobs or seeking visa for immigration or jobs abroad.