TCS iON opens AI-driven Command Centre in Chennai to monitor exam venues

More than 6,000 exam centres to be covered real time across the country

TCS iON, a strategic unit of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) inaugurated its Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven Command Centre in Chennai. The facility can monitor more than 6,000 of its unique examination venues across the country, in real time.

The digital monitoring platform would offer a superior experience to administrators, by ensuring exams are conducted in a fair and transparent manner, the company said.

The facility can monitor the exam process through a set of over 150 parameters which it will use to predict and prevent cases of cheating and other malpractices, and post incidents as alerts for efficient management of the exam. It can track the movement of candidates and the devices they carry to the exam centre, via a live CCTV feed. The system can also assess the readiness of a venue based on past incidents and the current live feed of events taking place there.

It will also issue alerts on malpractice attempts, based on malpractice patterns of the past, besides tracking the readiness of all devices being used for conducting the exam. It will achieve this by leveraging TCS’ IoT framework.

It will help TCS iON and its customers to issue proactive automated directions through instant alerts against issues like exam interruptions or unusual behaviour on server or candidate systems.

The Centre is equipped with a remote Energy Management Solution that monitors critical power parameters during assessments. Sensors collect real-time data and the temperature of servers and UPS rooms, for near real-time monitoring and data analytics for preventive maintenance. It will issue instant notifications for early fault detection to avoid disruption due to power failures or other such issues during exams.

Venguswamy Ramaswamy, Global Head, TCS iON, said, “This is our next leap to reimagine the exam monitoring process and assure fair and free exams at scale, even in the remotest locations within and outside India. This is aligned to our vision of making examination processes in the country secure and scalable."

The real-time monitoring of the end-to-end examination process are executed through an interplay of digital technologies covering cloud, analytics, artificial intelligence driven algorithms, IoT frameworks and other high-end computational and image processing algorithms. By providing such 360-degree assurance, we aim to raise the bar for monitoring large scale exams.

TCS iON caters to education boards and recruitment bodies to conduct large-scale and high-stake examinations in India through its Digital Zones. Till date, it has conducted 3,180 exams for more than 200 million candidates in 6,444 exam venues across 643 cities.