‘Online admissions extended to over 650 colleges’

LAHORE
Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB) chairman Dr Umar Saif Wednesday said the Punjab government has extended the Online Colleges Admission System (OCAS) to more than 650 colleges across the province this year.
Addressing a training session held at Arfa IT Tower, where almost 300 officers and officials from the linked colleges participated in the training to get know how about functioning of OCAS, Dr Umar said the client colleges would offer the facility to the applicants to apply for admissions to their FA, FSC, ICS or equivalent programmes online immediately after matriculation result was announced.
He said the solution was based upon a collaborative relationship between Higher Education Department (HED) Punjab, all the nine Boards of Intermediate and Secondary Education (BISEs) of the province, Bank of Punjab (BoP) and the PITB.
The PITB chief said: “BISE matriculation data of students is loaded into the system that enables the students to access the system by entering only minimum set of information i.e. roll number, BISE, year and session through the website www.ocas.punjab.gov.pk. Candidates can apply to a particular college/programme through a simple online application form. They can then download and print their application fee slip through the system. Applications get validated in the system, only if Application Processing Fee of Rs.25 is paid at any branch of Bank of Punjab.”
While comparing with the old manual system, Dr Saif said earlier a student from Bhakker or Rajanpur desiring admission at Lahore, had to travel hundreds of miles with heavy expenditures but now the student was admitted without paying a single visit to the desired college/s.
“This is first and unique endeavor of its kind in Pakistan, utilizing a citizen-centric approach to service delivery and revenue collection. The model can indeed help government streamline critical Government to Citizen (G2C) operations and services as well as revenue collection. It was need of the time as every year hundreds of thousands of students and their parents had to stand in long queues for hours and hours at public colleges across Punjab to complete the admissions application process. The process traditionally remained hectic, time-consuming, and costly for students and their families who had no option but to take time off from work to tend to the matter. Moreover, the system offers application fee affordable for each, user friendly interface, transparency with online access to data and merit lists, easy adoption by colleges, standardized workflow and real-time reports across all colleges and programs,” Dr. Saif said.
He revealed that the system was introduced in different phases and more than 390,000 applications were processed online since the system commenced four years ago in Punjab.