Reengineering the Administrative and Support Systems of Universities for Gearing Towards A Paperless System

Many of the universities and other higher educational institutions in India still follow the same old administrative and support structure and operations which had been designed and implemented well before the advent of modern Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). While ICT has been successfully integrated into academic operations, its integration into the administrative and support operations remains largely unattended. In larger affiliating universities with around half a million enrolment, this has resulted in extremely poor quality of student services. The affiliating universities in India cannot for long continue with such deplorable level of student services; change is inevitable and the pressure for change is mounting from the public, the media, and stakeholder groups. This change is mainly driven by the new technological possibilities and the new administrative environment they enable. This paper underscores the need for an ICT-enabled reengineering of the existing administrative and support structure and operations of the universities and other institutions of higher education with an objective of moving towards a paperless administrative and support system.