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After years of piling up paper files, the Education Service Commission (ESC) will soon phase out its manual operations and demand that applicants for a job in the sector resort to electronic applications. The move to electronic means will ease the commission's ability to detect forgeries in applications and employment records.

The government has appointed a task force to create a national database of academic qualifications to ensure confidentiality, authenticity, online verification and easy retrieval of degrees.

There is a certain frustration at the Mpraeso Secondary School over the administration's attempts to improve accountability and transparency. The implementation of anti-corruption measures through the automation of accounting and administrative procedures as a means of checking and curbing corruption has been bogged by official apathy. The computerization programme, 'School Management Programme', that could have cost the school about ¢5 million a few months ago will now cost the school almost double that amount.

According to the study, "Fake Universities and Bogus Degrees – Sweden and the World", there has been an increase in the number of job seekers who have been caught trying to pass off fake degrees as genuine, with more than 30 cases reported in the last two years. According to the National Agency for Higher Education, there exists over 800 Web-based fake universities. The study recommends use of a digital database that employers can access to verify an applicant's qualifications, something into which Australia is already looking.