700,000 access exam results online

Information from the Rwanda National Examination Council (RNEC)’s ICT unit shows that a total of 717,485 people have consulted the online exam results since January this year when the first batch of the 2009 results was published. The facility is used through Short Message Service (SMS) and making online requests on the institution’s website. In an interview with The New Times yesterday, the Director of ICT at RNEC, Simon R. Munyaneza, said that the introduction of this service has cut the influx of people at the RNEC offices by up to 98 percent. “People used to flood this place in big numbers immediately after the announcing of the examination results, but since the introduction of this facility, the numbers have dwindled,” explained Munyaneza. He added that those people who still came to their offices are those with complaints. According to records obtained from the unit, last year, there were a total of 1,096, 392 online requests and 245,605 SMS’s, while 662,997 online requests and over half a million short messages have so far been registered this year. The ICT department, Munyaneza said, has a number of modules in the pipeline that will help the institution to function smoothly when fully developed. “We want to introduce a module that will help in the online registration for private candidates and schools. However, the limitation we still have is the fact that it has to be backed by online payment which are not yet popular in the country,” he said. He added that the module will also help save time consumed by the traditional registration process. Another programme in the offing is the online application for teachers who will be interested in marking national exams at different levels. This will help to store data on suitable applicants so that when their services are needed; they just send them letters instead of repeating the whole application exercise every year. Ends