Sparc Systems Limited has introduced a digital in education system called SARIS to ease challenges Universities and students around the world face to keep and access information.
SARIS which stands for Student Record Academic Information Systems, is a modern Cloud ready system capable of being deployed to unlimited number of universities and managed by these universities in what is called Multitenancy Cloud Systems.
Speaking in a presentation to mark the unveiling of the system, Sparc Managing Director Wisely Phiri said the development will also help to eliminate cases of fraud where employees manipulate their academic records or certificates in order for them to get a job.
“The system is to be used by colleges and universities to manage student records and provide a 360° view of the institutions. From student registration processes, to student time at school to graduation and being able to export transcripts for students’ records.
“The system gives access to students, lecturers, wardens, administration, registrar, principal and others to do their work smoothly through this online system. For the industry the system allows them to search a particular student if they were at the said university to help minimise fraud. The student can also export their transcript to potential employers. This will help reduce time taken for the employers to verify records such as the transcript as these can be verified online,” he said.
Developed by local engineers, Phiri said the work took almost eight months to finalise.
On the fears that the system may be prone to some cyber-attacks, Phiri said they have considered all the aspect to ensure it is free from attacks.
“Of course, in cyber security we say there is no system that is 100% fool proof but we have designed this system with security in mind. The system has been designed with role-based access control. This means people with specific roles can authorize certain aspect of the system.
When a student wants to have access to the system, an email is sent to their email address for verification as a security measure.
“Then again within the system any change needs to be authorized by personnel with higher roles so unless there is maneuvering of say up to 5-10 people to change the records you will not be able to fool this system.” he added.
Phiri then boasted of having a digital platform which may also be used in other sectors to secure their data digitally.
“Most Universities struggle to produce data for their former students because they are not able to store it digitally. They can’t even tell the total figure if students who have graduated in the past ten years.
“Look, we have developed a system that can manage to keep data for students across a number of Universities in the world. It is therefore possible that other sectors too can have their system. For instance, look at the Affordable Input Program faced a lot of hurdles which could have been easily rectified by such systems developed by our Malawian engineers,” he said.
“Currently we are also hearing of departments like Ministry of Health failing to account for people that have been referred to outside hospitals saying that they can’t do reports since their systems are not digitized. Our system has digitized data and is able to produce reports by the click of the button hence can be modified to help in these scenarios.” he added.
Sparc systems works in a number of countries in Africa including Malawi, Zambia, and Rwanda.
