Deadline for Membership Verification of the Computer Society of India Moved to 29-Jun-2023

 

Message from MD Agrawal dated 27-Jun-2023

The deadline for verifying your registered email address with Computer Society of India has been moved to 29-Jun-2023. CSI Membership Number in some cases may start with a letter of the alphabet which looks like I or like the number 1. Please take it as Capital i.

Earlier Message from MD Agrawal, Former President, CSI dated 15-Jun-2023

Dear CSI Member,

Kindly ignore the mail if you have already verified Email Id and Mobile number.

We are contacting you again to verify your email id and mobile number as recorded in the Membership Register maintained by CSI HQ. This is needed for preparing the Voters List for the election to various posts in the Executive Committee of the Computer Society of India (CSI). Please complete the verification process by the 20th of June 2023.

Bombay High Court (BHC) has appointed a Three-member Committee (TMC) to hold elections. BHC appointed a retired Judge of the Bombay High Court- Justice R. M. Savant - to prepare a Voters List. As directed by Hon'ble Justice Savant (Retd), Membership Register maintained by CSI Headquarters with a cut-off date of 28th February 2023 will be taken for verification, TMC has appointed CDSL to carry out the task of verification.

The email and mobile number verification process is as follows:

1. As per the Bombay High court order CSI members are requested to verify their email Id and mobile numbers by clicking the link www.evotingindia.com/Vrify.jsp

2. The members will be redirected to verification page.

3. Enter your Member ID: (The members to enter his member id registered with CSI)

4. Enter the Characters Displayed (Enter the characters from captcha image)

5. Verify Phone No OTP: (Click on “Send OTP” to receive OTP on your registered mobile & “Verify OTP “ by entering the same) OTP will be valid for 15 minutes only.

6. Verify Email ID OTP: (Click on “Send OTP” to receive OTP on your registered email id & “Verify OTP “ by entering the same) OTP will be valid for 15 minutes only.

7. After OTP verification, a message will be displayed “Mobile number/ Email id successfully verified!”

For those whose mail id and/or mobile number are incorrect, please get in touch with Ms. Sonali Naik at CSI headquarters and furnish her the change to be made in mail id and/or mobile number. Her e-mail id is sonali@csi-india.org

Note: CSI members may note that verification of Email Id and Mobile number process has to be done using the OTP route only for being termed as a valid voter."

Please act on this communication immediately by following the above steps.

A Big Step Forward for the Computer Society of India (CSI)

 

Photo Credit: DTR - Own work, Public Domain, Through Wikimedia Commons

Thanks to a decision of the Honorable High Court of Bombay, a major verification of the membership list of CSI is underway. CSI’s membership is being updated by verifying email addresses and phone numbers by sending one-time passwords. If you do not have the right communication details, you can request CSI HQ to update them by sending them an email.

This has put a tremendous load on the CSI HQ, but progress doesn’t come easy.

The mammoth task has had its glitches, but improvements made in the last few days has resulted in a lot of us getting verification completed in one try.

I request all CSI members to try to get the verification completed by the deadline, which is 20-Jun-2023. The next step is to vote without fail after the ballot reaches us. This is a rare opportunity to save this national institution and a great professional network.

We must have a higher percentage of members voting this year as compared to the historical record. It is the low voting percentage that caused problems to CSI in the past.

Srinivasan Ramani

Problems with Voice Response Systems

I had to call the call center of a credit card company today. They wanted me to enter a 16 digit credit card number. OK. The press 1 for this and press 1 for that. Then enter 1 to submit the otp that has been sent to your registed phone number! I got lost! 

What is all this palaver for? Can't their system recognize my phone number using Caller ID? 

Let my nation awake and hire IT people who know what they are doing!

Srinivasan Ramani 

 

Problems with Automated Transactions

Darkness Under the Lamp

Photo Credit: Siddharth Varanasi - Flickr: DSC_0455
CC BY 2.0, File:Diya, an oil lamp.jpg, Created: 26 October 2011

There is darkness under the lamp! The Computer Society of India is going through the process of verifying its list of members and the process has been proving to be difficult. I am not an outsider. I am a life member of CSI and am proud to be one. That does not mean that I should not discuss technical problems.

The trouble begins with your ID number. It reads something like 100045XX. When you type it into the verification system, it is likely to say something like “enter a valid number”. After trying three or four times you go around asking people and find that the ID is actually something like I00045XX, beginning with I not 1.

Then you have to verify your email address and mobile number. This seems to be about as challenging as climbing Makalu! After many complaints, the professionals concerned increased the time limit for the OTP to expire. That has not completely solved the problem. Members are continuing to warn each other that we have only days to go before we complete the process; otherwise, no vote for you!

I think it is poetic justice for computer professionals to face this type of problem. Every day, millions of users of automated systems suffer because of bad design and implementation.  

Another example of this: today I looked up to see what I had to pay for a credit card. There had been no email or message on this from the company concerned for two months. I then used the app on the cell phone. It showed me the current statement, but not the last statement, which should give me the amount due. Once upon a time when they used to send a printed bill every month, it made some sense to save money by not sending it when the amount due was Nil. It makes no sense now to deny me an email saying I owe nothing this month.

Of course, I could see from the app the amount due by going to the payment page, but that page has no date and hence has no evidentiary value. If I make a small mistake and fail to pay a month’s dues on time, I could be charged a hefty interest and penalty, but if they run a lousy system, there is no one to pull them up.

I don’t see how India is going to become a superpower when its plumbing leaks, its electricity is stolen, and its automated systems waste your time. 

Srinivasan Ramani