BHUBANESWAR: The Odisha government has decided to migrate all the universities and autonomous colleges in the State to the National Academic Depository (NAD) platform by January 1, 2022 under which, academic awards, mark-sheets and certificates of students will be kept in DigiLocker.
The cloud-based service, designated as the sole National Academic Depository by the Ministry of Education, is a 24x7 online storehouse of all academic awards. It will not only ensure easy access and retrieval of an academic award but also validate and guarantee its authenticity and safe storage.
Keeping this in view, Higher Education Secretary Saswat Mishra on Wednesday directed all 13 universities, 18 government autonomous colleges and 17 non-government autonomous colleges to migrate to NAD portal by January 1, 2022.
For effective implementation of the move, he also directed the institutions to upload all academic awards, mark-sheets and certificates issued from 2015 calendar year onwards by December 31, 2021.
According to reports, 13 universities and 18 autonomous colleges have registered in the NAD portal while 13 out of 17 non-government autonomous colleges have migrated to the portal so far. Of the registered educational institutions, only nine have initiated the process for uploading marksheets and certificates.
Gangadhar Meher University in Sambalpur has uploaded the highest number of 24,776 documents for the period of 2017 to 2020.