VISAKHAPATNAM: The Andhra Pradesh government's Smart Pulse Survey has run into technical snags not only in East Godavari but elsewhere in the state too. The survey was launched on July 8 to create a socioeconomic digital database of around 14.84 million households in the state. Some 32,000 enumerators and supervisors have been drafted to carry out the data collection and uploading but the survey has struggled to get off the ground from day one.
Enumerators across the state are complaining that uploading of data is taking a long time owing to poor connectivity between field-level gadgets and the main server in Hyderabad. In several instances, uploading the data of one family is taking almost one and a half hour, enumerators said. The iris cameras too are not working properly.
The authorities supervising the survey are looking to the National Informatics Centre (NIC) to fix the glitches. But NIC says the state government entrusted the entire survey to a Vijayawada-based private agency which claims to have developed exclusive software and set up a server for the purpose.
"There is a wrong notion among officials that we are actively involved in the survey. But the fact is that our role is limited to training the enumerators. The entire work has been entrusted to a private agency. We do not even know as to what software is being used for the survey," a senior official of NIC told New Indian Express.
Meanwhile, enumerators are in a fix as to how to complete the survey before the July 31 deadline, given the technical glitches.
"We have no clue how we will get it done. In several places, there is not even a 2G network.
After entering two or three items of data, we are losing the signal and the tab is showing a 'still working' message, which means it cannot connect to the main server properly. It takes one and a half hours to complete the survey for one household," one enumerator said, adding that the citizens are getting angry as they have to wait for long to complete the uploading process.
Requesting anonymity, one official associated with the survey pointed out that ahead of the survey, field staff had informed the higher-ups that the survey would be a smooth affair as they were already disbursing pensions through tabs even in remote villages.
"While disbursing pensions in remote areas, officials sit at a place where the network is available and the beneficiaries come there. But in this survey, the enumerators have to go to individual houses where connectivity is not available, especially in hilly and remote areas," he said.
"This is the first time that such a big survey has been undertaken. With a huge number of enumerators accessing the server at the same time, the load on the server increases. However, we are on the job to fix this. If internet connectivity is not there, the enumerators can save the data and upload it latter when network is available," a software engineers involved in the survey said.
Asked about the troubles, a senior official said all districts were reporting similar problems and it has been brought to the notice of the information technology secretary. A review meeting will be held once chief minister Chandrababu Naidu returns from abroad.