From December 1, the KAMS attendance system was introduced at the Commissioner of the Department of Education instead of the previous biometric attendance system. | Photo credit: file photo
To effectively manage and monitor the attendance of its employees, the Department of School Education and Literacy (DSEL) has implemented the Karnataka Mobile Attendance Management System (KAMS) for all Deputy Directors of Public Instruction (DDPI) and Block Education Officers (BEOs), including employees of the Commissionerate of Public Instruction, Bengaluru.
From December 1, the KAMS attendance system was implemented at the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) in place of the previous biometric attendance system.
This comes amid a growing demand by the School Development and Monitoring Committee (SDMC) to make the KAMS attendance system mandatory for teachers as well, to ensure quality education and prevent absenteeism.
What has changed
So far, the daily attendance and timekeeping of officers/staff in the school education department has been managed through a biometric hardware system. However, many shortcomings were identified, such as maintenance of machinery in the biometric system and maintenance of reports or data.
Additionally, the state government has taken steps to introduce a unified attendance management system in all government offices. In this regard, to address the challenges posed by traditional attendance methods such as register-based attendance system and signing attendance system in government offices, the state government through the Department of Personnel and Administrative Reforms (e-Governance) has developed mobile KAMS.
This technology is powered by artificial intelligence (AI) and works on facial recognition and geographic information system (GIS).
In this attendance system, employees have to mandatorily enter their Aadhaar details along with all their service information. If this is not done, the monthly salary of these officers/employees will not be generated.
“A link has already been shared in the WhatsApp group in the Commissioner’s office to make it mandatory for every officer/employee to register with KMAS. The user manual and link have also been provided in English and Kannada versions of KAMS. Disciplinary action will be taken besides stopping the salaries of officers and employees who fail to register in the new attendance system,” the DPI commissioner warned.
Absence of teacher
Meanwhile, Umesh G. Gangavadi, state president of SDMC, in an interview with The Hindu, urged that teachers be included in the new system.
“Teacher absenteeism is common in government schools. Even the officials do not manage the attendance of teachers properly. It is common for many teachers to be absent from school without any reason on the pretext of office work. This hinders quality education. The government has already taken steps to implement an AI-based facial recognition attendance system for school children,” he said.
Published – 07 Dec 2025 20:01 IST
