What Caused the Recent CBSE Portal Glitches? IIT Experts Investigate!

Investigation into CBSE Portal Issues

New Delhi: On Tuesday, V Kamakoti, the Director of IIT Madras, announced that a team comprising members from both IIT Madras and IIT Kanpur has commenced an investigation into the recent issues plaguing the CBSE portal, which include payment failures and problems with answer sheet uploads.

In a conversation with a news agency, Kamakoti revealed that the team began its assessment on Monday evening, aiming to identify the root cause of the disruptions.

He stated, “The portal faced issues for approximately two days. We need to determine the underlying reason for this failure. Was it a development issue, a technical glitch, or possibly a cyber attack? We aim to uncover this to prevent future occurrences.”

Kamakoti also noted that the CBSE portal has been stable for over 72 hours now.

Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan had previously instructed IIT Madras and IIT Kanpur to send professors and technical specialists to support the CBSE in ensuring a seamless re-evaluation process.

Kamakoti highlighted that the CBSE's initiative to implement On-Screen Marking (OMS) is intended to enhance transparency, allowing students to view their evaluated answer sheets and comprehend the deductions made.

He remarked, “From CBSE's perspective, they are attempting to implement a beneficial system that significantly increases transparency.”

However, he acknowledged that there were failures in the payment gateway or related systems.

The investigative team plans to conduct a thorough examination to develop a more robust platform that will prevent similar failures in the future.

Kamakoti explained that the team will perform a comprehensive review of the website and provide recommendations to the developers managing the platform, as well as analyze the interaction between the CBSE portal and payment systems during fee transactions.

He elaborated, “We will investigate how these two software systems communicate and how we can minimize failures.”

Regarding the team’s composition, Kamakoti mentioned that IIT Madras has assigned two experts: one with extensive experience in large-scale software deployment and another skilled in data analytics.

IIT Kanpur has also contributed two faculty members to the team.

When asked about student complaints regarding mismatched handwriting or blurred uploaded answer sheets, Kamakoti stated, “We have not yet reached the stage of analyzing this.”

The team will scrutinize the scanning and uploading process of answer sheets from an IT perspective to identify potential errors, which could stem from manual processes.

Kamakoti defended the OMS system, asserting that it provides students and parents with greater insight into the evaluation process.

He noted, “CBSE now offers an opportunity to appeal, allowing students to understand what happened to their answer scripts.”

He described the system as a significant advancement, representing the highest level of transparency achievable.

Kamakoti acknowledged that initial issues are common with new systems and assured that they will be resolved.

He also suggested that the increased public interest in accessing answer sheets may have contributed to the portal's issues.

He explained, “As more individuals began to access the portal, bandwidth and internet capacity may have become bottlenecks.”

Reflecting on his own experiences, Kamakoti shared, “I scored 99 out of 100 in my 1985 exam, and I still wonder why I lost that one mark.”

He emphasized that access to answer scripts can help parents better understand their child's strengths and thought processes.

However, he cautioned parents against exerting undue pressure on students, advising against post-exam analyses that could lead to stress.

When questioned about whether the glitches provide insights for large-scale digital examinations, particularly with the proposed transition of NEET-UG to a computer-based test (CBT), Kamakoti clarified that the two systems differ significantly.

He stated, “CBSE focuses on result dissemination, which is quite different from conducting a CBT examination.”

He noted that CBT for JEE Mains, JEE Advanced, and GATE has been successfully implemented for the past decade.

However, he acknowledged that the primary challenge in transitioning NEET-UG to CBT lies in the scale of the examination.

Kamakoti concluded, “The challenge is that 24 lakh students cannot take the exam in a single session; we have only managed around 3 lakh in one session so far.”

He suggested that to accommodate 24 lakh students, multiple sessions over several days would be necessary, similar to the normalization process used in JEE Mains.