IT Audit of Online Examination System of West Bengal Central School Service Commission

Abstract

West Bengal Central School Service Commission (WBCSSC) was constituted in November 1997 under West Bengal School Service Commission Act, 1997. It was entrusted with the recruitment process of teaching and non-teaching staff in Government aided schools in West Bengal by conducting Regional Level Selection Tests (RLSTs). From 2009, WBCSSC introduced an online system for conducting the recruitment process named as Integrated Online Examination System. A Performance Audit of WBCSSC was conducted during January and July 2017 covering seven RLSTs to obtain an assurance that adequate controls were in place to ensure confidentiality, integrity, transparency and reliability of the system. The audit revealed certain inadequacies in the implementation process, described below: 1. Best practices for development of system like User Requirement Specification, System Development Life Cycle, Data dictionary and Virtual Private Network connectivity were not followed which was likely to result in non-achievement of desired objectives. 2. Access controls were not properly defined and enforced resulting non-fixation of responsibility for errors of omission and commission. 3. The shortcomings of the system were used to intentionally manipulate the results to illegally benefit ineligible candidates. Changing the caste category, increasing the marks of academic scores, improperly escalating written examination marks, etc. of ineligible candidates would be tantamount to cheating. 4. Deficiencies in mapping the business and fundamental rules in the system deprived eligible candidates the scope to appear in the Personality test.