THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The attempt of the Kerala University to go in for document management system (DMS), digitisation of archives, has been in utter chaos. Seven companies were shortlisted for carrying out the digitisation and later the University Registrar submitted a report to the digitisation committee stating that four of them were not technically qualified. The report in this regard was submitted on January 29, after the bids were opened.The technical bids were opened during the technical presentation before the expert committee on January 23. The expert committee verified the technical documents and based on their presentation, seven out of the nine bidders were qualified. The seven companies shortlisted are BaeHAL Software Ltd, Bangalore; Sify Technologies Ltd, Thiruvananthapuram; Keonics Ltd, Bangalore; ITI Ltd; Cameo Corporate Services Ltd, Chennai; HP India Sales Pvt Ltd, Chennai and CMC Ltd, Thiruvananthapuram.The report, which is with the digitisation committee, said that BaeHAL Software, a lower bidder, submitted only purchase order copy of the work done before and no appreciation letter was submitted to prove the completion of the work. The DMS is a proprietary software of New Gen Software Technologies Ltd and the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and source code of the total system would be under the control of New Gen. Sify Technologies had not mentioned about transferring the IPR to the University. There is no mention of PDF/A creation, digital signature and process of validation and authenticity of document in the proposal.HP India Sales proposed a content management system, which is not the requirement of the University. CMC Ltd proposed proprietary software and needs additional support cost from second year onwards. The report said that if the University opts for proprietary software, the provider of the service may charge any amount of his choice after seven years or in some cases the company may vanish or sell off. This can lead to the end of the project where the University would not only have monetary loss but loss of documents also.A digitisation committee member told Express that the project should be implemented after taking utmost care as it was a long-term process. It seems that the University was in a hurry to select the company for digitisation. Kerala University Vice-Chancellor A Jayakrishnan said that a company had been selected for undertaking the work. However, the final decision would be taken by the government as the recommendationswould be submitted soon.The project ran into controversy when SIDCO was again selected for the second phase and later terminated for violating agreement. When tenders were floated again, SIDCO participated and later withdrew from the bid.
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