Bhubaneswar: Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) Chairman, Arvind Saxena on Monday said that the focus of the commission will be on making the entire examination process candidate-friendly. He also said that transparency is the key so that no one can raise questions on the UPSC or the State commissions at any level of selection process.
Speaking on the sideline of the two-day National Conference of Chairpersons of State Public Service Commissions here on Monday, Saxena said, "The number of candidates appearing for each exam is increasing and due to that we often fail to give proper attention to them; and so, the candidates sometime fail to get a good exam venue or else... So, our focus is on more use of IT to make the entire process more candidate-friendly. We are also working on certain areas so that the exam stress of the candidates can be reduced," said Saxena.
He further advised candidates to appear for UPSC and other State PSC exams only after full preparation as the commissions select 'the best candidates'.
Similarly, Odisha Public Service Commission (OPSC) Brigadier (Retd.) Laxmi Charan Patnaik said that a standard operating system will be followed so that the examinations can be conducted smoothly.
"We usually discuss on technical, legal and statutory aspects and reach to a common solution which becomes a model guideline. How to digitalise the entire process to help candidates, how to handle the legal matters and strictly follow the guidelines of Supreme Court for such exams were discussed," said Patnaik.
He further said that the chairpersons (during the conference) mostly discussed on digital evaluation and the focus of the commissions will be on shifting the ‘pen and paper’ mode of examination to a computer-based mode. "Digitalisation will help the candidates know their performance and marks secured for each answer," Patnaik added.
"Digitalisation and transparency will immensely help us. Shifting of the entire selection process to online mode will also save time," said a UPSC aspirant.
The civil services examination is conducted annually by the UPSC in three stages- preliminary, main and interview- to select officers for Indian Administrative Service (IAS), Indian Foreign Service (IFS) and Indian Police Service (IPS) among others.
Earlier, in a first, UPSC had released an official statement stating that candidates would be allowed to withdraw from examination and the arrangement would be implemented beginning with Engineering Services Examination, 2019.