Race tracking system streamlines Indian government employment process
Date posted: 26 Jul 2011
Lenin Chalasani
MIT 2003
Five of India’s largest states have adopted a new computerised tracking system developed by Swinburne alumnus Lenin Chalasani to help with the government recruitment process.
The system is aimed at streamlining mass application rounds for the public service, and boosting regulatory compliance.
Since he graduated with a Master of Information Technology in 2003, Lenin has maintained an ongoing relationship with Swinburne to help his company – Timing Technologies India – with research and development and has worked on a range of successful projects for the Indian public service.
The tracking system for the public service recruitment program automates a time-consuming manual process.
“Every year hundreds of thousands of hopefuls wishing to secure a public service job must first pass a physical examination requiring completion of a two-to-three kilometre run within a short time,” said Swinburne system developer and researcher Dr Rajesh Vasa, who has worked with Lenin to develop the race timing system.
“The manual system involves candidates running the race in a stadium, with a few people timing the race using a stop watch, and some 2000 organisers.”
It is highly time-consuming to conduct, as there are often 200,000 to 300,000 candidates in each state that want to attempt the physical examination.
Motivated by government recruiters’ desire to make race results more transparent through technology, Lenin and Rajesh hit upon the idea of automating the process using radio frequency identifier tags attached to runners’ feet.
They worked together to develop the race timing system to measure racers’ times, with the results collated into a central database in real time as soon as the candidate completes the race. Tag readers are placed strategically along the track to ensure accuracy of the data.
The candidates are themselves also tagged using finger-print biometrics to ensure the person running the race is the person that registered, and also the person eventually selected for the job.
An Indian government spokesman said the government ‘was actively and continuously integrating technology to improve governance and regulatory compliance, with this being just one example’.
The system is currently fully operational in three states: Uttar Pradesh, the largest, Gujarat, the most industrialised and Tamil Nadu, the most urban. It is so robust that it has been used to test 10,000 candidates per day across 20-25 different districts, or around 1 million candidates in the past 12 months.
The automated system offers a very substantial reduction in data entry problems, is faster to administer with races now completed across 15-20 districts in under a month, and ensures that the best candidates move on to the next stage, Rajesh said.
The timing system is also used for marathons in New Delhi, Bangalore and other large cities within India, but without the biometric testing.
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