Face Recognition Attendance Systems : 1) Trial of face recognition system in anganwadis to track nutritional meal distribution starts, Indore Indore: The women and child development department launched a trial of face recognition system across all 1,839 anganwadis in Indore district to accurately track the number of children receiving nutritional meals."There are around 1.85 lakh children enrolled and over 30,000 women registered across 1,839 anganwadis in the district. Nutritional food is provided to children at these centres and lactating mothers also receive nutrition packets. To ensure that the benefits of the scheme reach the intended beneficiaries, all anganwadi workers have been instructed to download Poshan Tracker app on their mobile phones," WCD district programme officer Ram Niwas Budholiya said.Through this app, anganwadi workers are required to take photos of children and women visiting the centres. "In the first phase, we implemented this for children at all anganwadis. This is a trial. Women will also be included in the second phase. The system will be fully implemented in three to four months," he said.The Poshan Tracker Face Recognition System will only register attendance when a face is shown to the device and the distribution of nutritional food will be based on this verified attendance. In Indore, a trial was conducted through the Poshan Tracker app where facial recognition was used to check the attendance of children and women to ensure accurate nutritional meal distribution. 2) Nagaland to use facial recognition for teacher’s attendance, but what are the issues at stake: Nagaland plans to roll out a facial recognition- based teacher attendance monitoring system across all the public schools in the state, MediaNama has learnt from a tender the state education department floated on March 2, 2022. The tender has since been taken up by unknown parties, a government source confirmed, and has been removed from both the Nagaland Education Department and Government of India’s e-Procurement websites. The scope of the project covers the entire public schooling structure which includes not only the 1,953 primary and secondary schools under the Nagaland Board of Secondary Education but also state-funded religious schools and single teacher academies which are prevalent in the mountainous state. Notably, the state’s 717 private schools are exceptions to the rule. “The Department of School Education realizes that while teaching positions at all levels of schooling were filled with regular teachers, there was a phenomenon of ‘proxy-teachers’ across the state, particularly in the more remote areas. This involved appointed teachers not taking classes themselves and instead sending unknown substitutes on their behalf,” the government said as the reason behind the roll-out. 3) Gujarat’s new system of teachers’ attendance through face recognition While the government has abandoned the plan to use Microsoft’s Kaizala mobile phone application to mark attendance, it has stuck by the technology of face recognition. A new system of marking attendance using face recognition technology kicked into place for primary school teachers in Gujarat on September 5. Teachers had been opposed to the system, citing concerns over privacy and the government’s seeming lack of trust in them. Teachers enroll their face biometrics during registration (capture of facial features). The app is optimized so that minor changes (glasses, angle, etc.) don’t block recognition. The data gathered (face biometrics, locations) is encrypted and stored on Gujarat government’s Science & Technology Department server (via GIPL). The government provided tablets with the app pre-installed, kept under the school principal’s care. 4) NMC Links Sanitation Workers' Pay To Face- Recognition Attendance Nagpur: The Nagpur Municipal Corporation (NMC) has introduced a face-recognition attendance system for its 5,314 sanitation workers, making their salaries conditional on daily presence from September 16. The civic body, which has long grappled with absenteeism among staff, hopes the new system will bring much-needed discipline and improve city's cleanliness, particularly street sweepingIn the past, NMC distributed GPS-enabled wristwatches to track workers, but many were misused by handing them to substitutes or relatives who roamed around designated beats. To overcome this, the IT department launched a pilot project in the Dharampeth zone three months ago, which yielded positive results. Based on its success, the system has now been expanded to all 10 zones of the city. Additional municipal commissioner Vasumana Pant, who inspected several attendance points on Wednesday morning, told TOI that the move has been launched "to improve sanitation standards, especially sweeping of city streets." Deputy municipal commissioner (solid waste management) Rajesh Bhagat, chief sanitation officer Dr Gajendra Mahalle, and IT department officials also visited multiple locations to check the functioning of the app- based system. 5) Government PU college student develops facial-recognition attendance system BENGALURU: A government PU college student in Puttur, Dakshina Kannada, has developed a face- recognition-based attendance system that not only records student attendance within seconds but also sends an instant message on the Telegram app to parents every time their child arrives at school. Arun Kumar V, a PU II student at Government PU College, Kombettu in Puttur taluk, created the system using his knowledge from the IT stream under the National Skills Qualifications Framework (NSQF), which he has been studying since Class 9. Inspired by his learning at the Atal Tinkering Lab - innovation workspaces established in schools across India by the Atal Innovation Mission (AIM), a flagship initiative of NITI Aayog, Arun spent three months designing and building the system with guidance from his IT teacher, Ashlesh Kumar. The device uses a web camera to recognise students’ faces as they arrive at school. Once identified, the student’s name appears on a display screen, and a message is immediately sent to their parents’ phone. This message includes name, date, time, and confirmation of attendance. Before using the system, each student must be registered by entering their name, class, section, parents’ mobile number, and five photographs taken from different angles. Daily at 11 am, the system generates a PDF report of the attendance, which is sent to the head master’s phone via the Telegram app. At the same time, students who have not been marked present are registered as absent, and their parents receive an alert. After that point, the system does not allow further attendance entries for the day. The device has the capacity to store information for 500 students and takes just 1-2 seconds to record each entry. In schools, one device can handle up to 200 students. The current version, which is still in the experimental stage, was built using low-cost equipment, bringing the total cost to approximately Rs 13,000. However, this cost may increase for larger-scale production. The system is powered by a Raspberry Pi motherboard, and includes other parts to hold the components. For full functionality, the device needs to be connected to the internet via Wi-Fi. Arun said that with further changes, his model can be adopted in more schools across the state.