SMART portal fails to provide answers

The National Skill Development Corporation’s (NSDC) online portal, which was re-launched earlier this month after remaining down for two months, continued to battle bugs with users complaining of incomplete data being displayed.

According to training centres, SMART (Skill Management Accreditation of Training Centers) – which digitally manages over 13,000 centres across India – was loaded with insufficient data and unclear information on saturation index of targets.

“SMART portal was re-launched after a gap of two months but NSDC has used old format, which is very confusing and unclear as well. It is like old wine in new bottle. Data uploaded should give a clear picture of saturation index, state/ skill/job roll wise in one sheet. The information uploaded is also confusing,” said Hitender Nahar, a training partner.

He added that the state saturation index data displayed when training centres logged in was different from the one mentioned in the PDF on the website.

The NSDC had recently wrested control of the portal from Quality Council of India (QCI) following a series of complaints related to ‘inept’ quality inspection of centres.

NDSC officials said the SMART portal was a Beta version, which was on a trial run. A disclaimer on the portal reads “... The Primary purpose of the Beta version launch is to obtain feedback performance, identification of technical problems and their resolution to deliver their enhanced interfaces ...”