Hyderabad: NGOs that run homes for children, women and the aged and orphanages have generally ignored ‘Balsahara’, a mobile and web-based automation system developed by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing. The app is free.
Balsahara can track funds used for diet, education and medical care online and fudging of the financial reports is not possible with the installation of the software.
So far, only around 100 child and women care institutions being run in Telangana state and Andhra Pradesh are using it .
CDAC Hyderabad director E. Magesh said, “Balsahara is a web-based software to automate the activities of the juvenile justice system and the various children homes, orphanages, homes for abandoned and destitute children and for runaway street children.”
He said this could include an inventory management system that keeps tracks of the stock position, kitchens, the diet of inmates, and donations. He said how many kilograms of rice had been supplied and how much was spent on each child can be accounted.
“This prevents any misappropriation. Medical care like health profile management, daily patient care, home hygiene record, attendance tracking, curriculum scheduled, performance assessment module, academic progress reports, individual care plan and juvenile work flow management are a part,” he said. Balsahara is being used by both AP and TS government-run homes, including 24 for boys and 81 for girls.
Asked about private NGOs, he said, “We have held discussions with several NGOs and offered them the app. None of them has come forward,”
Researchers of CDAC have gathered domain knowledge with the help of Unicef and the process flow has been designed as per the Juvenile Justice Act. Officials said it is multilingual and can be modified for regular homes too.
