Mobile Application Interface to Register Citizen Complaint

International Journal for Research in Engineering Application & Management (IJREAM)

Vol-01, Issue 03, June 2015.

Mobile Application Interface to Register Citizen

Complaint

Dhaval Gherwada,

Vipul Shah,

Deep Shah,

Prof. Harsh N. Bhor

1,2,3

B.E IT Student, KJSIEIT, Sion, Mumbai,

Asst Professor, KJSIEIT, Sion, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India

dhawal.g@somaiya.edu,

vipul.shah@somaiya.edu,

deep.shah@somaiya.edu,

[email protected]

Abstract — The day to day operations and functioning of the city is taken care by local governing bodies which is known

as Government Authorities. Among many other things one of the most important responsibility of the Government

Authorities is to manage and solve the complaints that the residents of the city might have. Now in order to maintain the

large city requires that the Government Authority need to be aware of any problem or shortcoming either through

(sensors/ CCTV cameras) or by allowing the citizens to complaint about these problems. The second option is usually

preferred because it gives the proper valid information. A mechanism to accept the complaints from citizens of the city

24×7 times would be expectation from both the citizens of city and the Government Authorities(GA). The GA generally

allows its citizens to register their complaint through several mediums. [6] The chief modes of complaint registration is

(a) by visiting the nearest Citizen Facilitation Centre (CFC) established by the Municipal Corporation where an officer

listen to the complaints and asks some information and fills it in an electronic form. (b) By calling a contact centre,

where the complaint is registered by a call centre agent by typing the complaint into electronic form, or (c) By filling in

online complaint registration form i.e. through web portal. In this paper we purpose an Android Application Mobile

interface which can be used to lodge complaints. The main idea is to make use of the existing web infrastructure and to

provide an easy, cheap and quick mode of complaint registration. The proposed system will enable the citizens of city to

lodge complaints anytime, anywhere.

Keywords— Mobile Application, Android, Citizen Complain, Interface, App.

I. INTRODUCTION

Municipal services or city services refers to basic services

that residents of a city expect the city government to provide

in exchange for the taxes which citizens pay.[5] Basic city

services may include sanitation (both sewer & refuse),

water, streets, schools, food inspection, fire department,

police, ambulance, and other health department issues and

transportation. City government often operate or contact for

additional utilities like electricity, gas and cable television.

Mumbai city government also provides a lighthouse

services.[2] The available municipal services for any

individual municipality will depend on location, history,

geography, statues and tradition. Provided services may

vary from country to country or even within a country.

Services may run directly by a department of the

municipality or by sub-contracted to a third party.

There has been broad research in the area of e-services

for municipal use.[8] The idea is to understand the benefits,

usability and utility of services that are provided by a city

government using latest and better technologies. The city

government of Mumbai which take care of the upkeep of the

city is one of the more tech-savvy CG (City

Government).[1] There are several departments within the

CG to handle different aspects of the city upkeep. It is

important for the city government to know about the

problems as and when they arrive in to existence of the city.

So that the problem areas can be solved quickly and

efficiently. For easy handling of the problems, the city is

divided into wards. The Mumbai CG has 24 wards. Any

complaints belonging to or originated from a ward is only

handled by the officers of that ward. Complaint redressal

(Resolving process) gets delayed significantly if the

complaint is routed to a different ward other than the

corresponding ward. Efficient functioning of all the

functionality and services in the area under the city

government depends on the citizen participation. City

government of Mumbai allows the citizens to register their

complaint using various interaction mechanism. [2] And a

correctly routed complaint is then handled by the

corresponding departmental authority in that ward. Once a

complaint is registered by the citizens, an appropriate ward

authority is notified about the complaint for action. The

citizen complaining is notified about the status of the

complaint. Citizen can lodge complaints related to solid

waste management, drainage , storm water drain, roads &

traffic factories, license issues, water supply, pest control,

building encroachment etc. by methods enlisted below:- (a)

By visiting the nearest Citizen Facilitation Centre(CFC)

established by Municipal Corporation belonging any of the

International Journal for Research in Engineering Application & Management (IJREAM)

Vol-01, Issue 03, June 2015.

24 ward of Mumbai CG where a agent listen to complaints

and asks some additional information and fills it in an

electronic form which is then stored in a central database.(b)

By calling a contact centre, where the complaint is

registered by a call centre agent by typing the complaint into

electronic form which is then stored in a central database.

Web portal from any computer connected to Internet, either

from home/office/cyber café. [6]

In all the methods described above the complaint is

stored in central database which is accessible to all the

wards of the city government to handle the complaints more

efficiently.[5] This makes the complaints more accessible.

The status of the complaint is available to person who has

placed the complaint through the portal to see 24×7. While

all of these modes have been made available for the citizens

to lodge complaints, the participation by the citizens has

been poor in case of (a) & (b) because these modes requires

more time for different reasons. But these modes of

complaint registration system have poor active citizen

participation because of the forum to register complaints.

The web portal (figure 1) has hand a large number of users

though the usage of computers with Internet connectivity is

not very high in India.

Fig.1 Screenshot of Existing Complaint Registration portal

On the other side the mobile phone usage is very high and is

growing in India in general.[9] It becomes really helpful and

easy for people to provide an easy to use mobile phone

based interface to lodge their complaints using their mobile

devices. If the citizens are given easy, cheap and yet

effective mode of lodging their complaints the active citizen

participation can be evoked easily. In this paper we will

propose Mobile Application Interface to enable the citizens

to register complaints and seek response from city

government. Figure 2 shows rough idea of the proposed

system.

Fig.2 Overview of proposed system

The advantages of this system is:

(a) It requires no change in the already existing web

portal to lodge complaints.

(b) Doesn’t require the citizens to remember any

specific information to lodge their complaints.

The mobile channel makes active citizen participation

possible because of the higher usage of mobile phones in

India.

II. SYSTEM BACKGROUND

The web portal interface (Figure 1) to help citizen

complaints is a most important initiative of the City

Government. The web interface consists of essentially

following types of information (a) a set of drop down list

boxes where the user need to select list of predefined

options. The interface consists of some of the mandatory

fields that need to be filled. Those mandatory fields are:

1) Type of complaint (Example: Traffic, Water leakage etc.)

2) Complaint Description (Description about the problem)

3) Address or location (Name of the region where the

complaint is applicable).

4) Landmark (a description of the nearest location).

5) Ward (User needs to be aware of the ward name before

lodging the complaints. Usually they are unaware of ward

name)

6) Personal Information (Name, Contact No. etc.)

The optional inputs required by the interface are

Address, Age, type (Example: Student, Employee) of the

person lodging the complaint. Once all the information is

given the web portal interface display the complaint number

on screen. This complaint number can be used to query the

status of the complaint at a later stage.

The web portal while allowing the users to lodge

complaint has some serious constrains. The user is restricted

to choose from among the list of predefined drop down list.

International Journal for Research in Engineering Application & Management (IJREAM)

Vol-01, Issue 03, June 2015.

This poses a major problem in the sense that the user tries to

fit his complaint intone of the predefined drop downs. This

results in a wrong fit and the complaint being directed to the

wrong department which in turn affects the time taken to

resolve the problem. The second major constraint is the

need for the user to be aware of the ward number,

additionally the user needs to have access to networked

computer. The mobile interface proposed in this paper tries

to overcome these issues to provide an easy to use Interface.

III. SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE

The proposed mobile application interface emulates the

functionality of the web portal based complaint filing

system. The architecture of the system is shown in figure 3.

The users use the mobile phone and do not need to access

the web portal interface directly to file their complaint. The

user runs the Application and can lodge complaint. Once all

the information about complaint is entered by the user the

application sends the information to server in a compatible

format [as a HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol) request]

to the server. Then the response from the server is fetched

and is parsed to determine complaint number. The

complaint number is then received by the user. This

complaint number is then can be used by the user to

generate the status of their complaint. But here the

complaint is only registered when all the mandatory fields

are filled.

IV. SYSTEM DESCRIPTION

Mobile Application will help the citizen of a municipal

corporation to register their complaints about day to day

problems in their ward through a mobile application. Mobile

Application will provide a common man to deliver his

complaints and problems to municipal authority as well as

let

Fig.3 Architecture of Proposed System [5]

the municipal authorities to address the issue as soon as

possible. The application provides an interface to register

one’s complained and follow it up. The interface will be

provided with camera module which help clicking up a

picture of any generalized problem that people are facing

and will upload this photo along with the complaint. The

location of complaint is tracked by Global Positioning

System (GPS). This module provides exact location of that

particular issue. Thus complaint, once registered, will be

redirected to specific department of Municipal Corporation

for example; a complaint about traffic will be redirected to

Traffic Control department. It is a single point web and

mobile based complaint management system linking all

departments in the organization could take administration

efficiency to the next level. The system benefits the

organization, employees and the citizen. One of the key

features in is the provision for citizens /consumers

/employees to lodge complaints/grievances using their

mobile phones with a software application specially

designed to file complaints.

There are basically following modules involved in a system:

1) Mobile Application :

Citizens will have mobile application .She/he can

finds a problem. Citizens can also embed an image with the

complaint.

This application can provides a user friendly UI interface.

Mobile application contains GPS tracking system too.

2) Communication Network :

Communication network is established in

following areas by using some protocols: (a) Mobile

application and server by using various protocols. (b) GPS

satellite and mobile application. (c) Camera module and

server.

3) Server :

It contains request acceptance and processing

system. It will contain specific UI for each department of

Municipal Corporation for example Police, Traffic control

etc. which will solve specific complaint related to that

department only. Server module will accept the

request and redirect it to department module after

scrutinizing it.

Received request can contain: (a) Image (not mandatory) (b)

Text (mandatory) (c) GPS location (automatically

generated)

4) Global Positioning System (GPS):

Along with these request application will embed

the location from which request are getting placed. This is

going to work by GPS tracking system. GPS devices are

International Journal for Research in Engineering Application & Management (IJREAM)

Vol-01, Issue 03, June 2015.

wireless and use satellites to enable users to detect the

position of mobile on earth.

5) Camera :

Mobile application is connected to camera module

so that one can embed images with the complaints.

The complete block diagram of the system is shown in

fig.4. The users using the mobile application will enter all

the information required to lodge complaints. If image

related to complaint is available then the user can embed the

Image too. And if user uses the GPS-enabled mobile then

the respective location of the complaint site is also

embedded in complaint. Once all the information gets

available the application will render the request and send it

to web server in compatible format. At the server side the

required validation will be made on the complaint. And then

in case of valid complaint, the complaint number is

generated then the complaint number is provided as

response to the citizen who has lodged the complaint.

Fig.4 Block Diagram of Proposed System

A. Functional Description

The overall system is developed to reduce the work of users

and government office employees. Overall system contains

one Mobile Application and Web Application. Through

mobile application people can register their complaint and

can check the status of complaint (open or closed).In Web

Application Complaints are view depending upon login for

example if employee in BMC Office logged in then he can

only see the complaints related to BMC Office and status of

each Complaint

By using Web Application Employees can see the

complaints and can take appropriate action .if complaint is

resolved then he have to change the status of complaint i.e.

closed. The figure 5 shows sequence diagram of the

proposed system which is described as follows:

Fig.5 Sequence diagram of Proposed System

1) Complaint Using Android Mobile Phone:

The User will launch the complaint to the respective

department using his/her Android mobile phone application,

Once the complaint is launch, the complaint description,

image, and the location in the form of latitude and longitude

will be forwarded to the head of the respective department.

2) Complaint Notification:

After launching the complaint successfully the user will get

the acknowledgement in the form of notification from the

Complaint management system. The user can also check the

status of the complaint regularly at any time and at any

place using his/her android mobile phone application.

3) Location tracking module:

The application can be built in such a way that the

corresponding location can be track by using the GPS

module that is present in every android cell phone. [7]That

means once the User launch’s his/her Complaint the Admin

on the server side will also get the current location from

where the complaint is being launched, The location is fetch

in the form of Latitude and longitude.

4) Department-wise Login:

Admin has been created based on the different Department

in the database. The Admin within the different department

can View the complaint that is being launched to that

particular department

5) Complaints management and updating:

Admin based on the different department can view the

complaints that is being launched to particular department.

The Admin has the authority to open or closed the

complaint. Then Admin can also reply to the user in the

form of notification that is being created when the admin

updates the complaint.

International Journal for Research in Engineering Application & Management (IJREAM)

Vol-01, Issue 03, June 2015.

V. CONCLUSION

We have proposed and introduced a novel mobile

application interface for the citizens to register their

complaints about the city. The system is targeted to every

citizen who can own mobile phone and is available all the

time. The proposed system can use the existing web portal

infrastructure of Mumbai City Government in the proposed

complaint registration system. Thus the main idea of the

proposed system is to provide the mobile application which

will facilitate the citizens to register their complaint about

day to day complaints in their locality through a mobile

application. The web application at the other end will

efficiently track and monitor the complaints thereby

generating a quick response to the citizen. In The case when

citizen register complaints, the system generates a contact

number (actually generated by the backend system) and

displays the complaint number to the user on his mobile

phone. This complaint number will help the citizens to

query the status of the complaint in future. In the case when

system fails to register complaint, the system will ask the

mandatory information to user. The proposed system also

allows mobile users to send photograph of the scene which

adds the authenticity in the proposed system and in some

sense makes the complaint details complete. Along with the

image the GPS module will also sends the real-time location

information (which consists of longitude and latitude

information) of the complaint site which provides accurate

determination about the location of site. Thus the proposed

system provides an easy, cheap and quick mode of

complaint registration around the clock.

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[3] Sunil Kopparapu, Akhilesh Srivastava, and PVS Rao.

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[4] Sunil Kopparapu, Akhilesh Srivastava, and PVS Rao.

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[5] Sunil Kopparapu, Natural Language Mobile Interface

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[6] MCGM, in

http://www.mcgm.gov.in/irj/portal/anonymous

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[7] Information Technology for Management. Wiley

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[9] Tech News.

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