HRD launches app to track funding, progress of projects

Higher education stakeholders and institutional leaders will now be able to track the progress of projects under Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiya (RUSA) with the HRD Ministry launching a 'Fund and reform' tracker.
The Ministry has also signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) for geo-tracking of the RUSA projects.
"To re-imagine our classrooms, be in sync with time and technology and engage stakeholders in constant conversation to do and achieve more, is the aim of this application besides being sort of a report card of states with details of their higher education policies, plans and best practices, " Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar said at the launch.

He said the interface would be available for the central government, the state higher education stakeholders and institutional leaders, apart from thousands of vendors panned across India.
"Each will get a varied level of access to the app depending on their role and functionality," he added.
RUSA is a centrally-sponsored scheme (CSS) of HRD Ministry aimed at providing central funding to state higher education departments and institutions to achieve the broad objectives of access, equity and excellence.

Javadekar also launched 17 projects under the scheme today including a cluster university in Jammu and Kashmir, solar power facility in Kerala's Shree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit and language laboratories in Jharkhand's Ghatsila College.

The app will capture the fund allocation as per the Project Approval Board, the instalment-wise fund release by the Centre and the state, the institution-wise key project, vendors appointed and the payment made to them as also stage- wise photos and time stamps of payments made and comments entered.
Every initiative will be tagged with a unique ID number, thus providing the entire story of how an idea germinated and matured.
The dashboard will give an overall picture of the scheme and the state-wise performance of the impact that the programme has made.
"Component-wise details give a quick snapshot into the funding of RUSA projects. Whether it is infrastructure grants of equity initiatives, this window gives a peek into the funds approved, the amount released, the sum utilised and the percentage of work completed," a senior HRD Ministry official said.

"Stakeholders can also get granular details on the money released from the Centre and the state. The date stamps give a picture on the timeliness followed and the pictures provide the ground reality," he added.