1,200 Forms Into a Portal That Locks on Submit
A block-level office must digitise 1,450 scholarship application forms into a state government portal before 5:00 p.m. Two data entry operators are available from 11:00 a.m. The portal validates the Aadhaar number (12 digits), the IFSC code and the bank account number, and it locks a record permanently once 'Submit' is clicked; corrections after submission need a written request to the district office and take about a week. The portal auto-saves a draft every 60 seconds.
Operator A types fast - about 95 forms an hour - but a sample check of her last 100 forms found 4 wrong account numbers and 2 misspelt names. Operator B types about 55 forms an hour with 0.5 per cent errors. Some forms are handwritten and faint; several applicants share the same name with different spellings; three forms appear to duplicate applications already submitted last month. The target is 1,200 forms today.
1. Allocate the work between the two operators and design a checking routine that meets the 1,200 target without letting errors reach the locked stage.
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Start with the arithmetic, because the target does not survive it. Combined capacity is about 95 + 55 = 150 forms per hour; from 11:00 to 17:00 that is roughly 900 forms, not 1,200. Report the shortfall to the supervisor at 11:15, not 16:45, and ask for a third operator or a written extension.
Allocation that protects accuracy where it costs money:
- Operator A takes clean, clearly printed forms, but never submits a bank account or Aadhaar field unchecked - a 4 per cent account error rate means about four wrong accounts per hundred, and a wrong account sends public money to a stranger and takes a week to reverse.
- Operator B takes faint handwriting, corrected forms and attachments, and spends 15 seconds second-checking only A's bank fields.
- Reserve 16:00–17:00 for reconciliation, not fresh entry: count submitted records, list duplicates, list rejections.
- Prioritise by deadline category rather than pile order, so the most urgent applications are locked in first.
2. How would you handle the duplicate and near-duplicate applications?
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Never merge and never delete.
- Match on Aadhaar, not on name. Same-name applicants with different spellings and different Aadhaar numbers are usually different people; identical Aadhaar proves duplication.
- Before submitting, run the portal's own duplicate check and compare against last month's submitted register.
- For a confirmed duplicate, do not submit a second record. Enter it in a separate duplicate register with applicant name, Aadhaar, reason ('already submitted 12 Feb, application no. XXXX') and the operator's initials.
- For a suspected duplicate (same name, different Aadhaar, different address), submit normally and flag it in the register - you are not authorised to decide identity.
- Hand the register to the verifying officer with the day's summary, so the decision is taken by someone with authority and a record exists. A wrong deletion is invisible; a flagged duplicate is not.
3. A record is rejected but the portal only says 'Invalid data' with no field highlighted. What do you do?
Read the worked answer
The portal rejects one of its validated fields, so test them in the order the portal checks:
- Aadhaar - exactly 12 digits, no spaces or dashes; a leading zero lost when the form was photocopied is a common cause.
- IFSC - 11 characters: four letters, a zero in the fifth position, six alphanumerics. Check against the passbook image, not against what looks plausible.
- Bank account - retype it in a plain text editor first; a spreadsheet copy often strips a leading zero or converts the number to scientific notation.
- Name fields - remove full stops, double spaces and special characters; the portal may accept only letters. If it still fails, save the draft (autosave every 60 seconds, but do not depend on it), do not press Submit repeatedly, and log the record number with the exact message. Escalate a batch of three identical failures to the district helpdesk with screenshots - one rejected record is your error; ten identical ones are a portal rule nobody told you about.