JANAHITA- USER MANUAL

Bengalooru

Municipal Reforms Cell,

Introduction

Today, it is widely agreed that increased civic awareness amongst citizens and

greater public participation is needed to promote effective local governance.

Availability of information is key, as is increased interaction between citizens and

their local representatives, and in this the provision of citizen feedback on various

problems and issues in the city plays no small role. Current citizen apathy to local

issues generally stems from having to deal with an opaque, often inaccessible

system, and a process is thus needed whereby citizens can air their grievances and

be able to effectively track the progress of the redressal process. Such a system

would also be of tremendous use to local administrators, enabling them to save

money and increase their efficiency by giving them deep insight into the problems

faced by the average citizen.

A Brief Note on the Existing System

The citizen registers a complaint to the corporation either by coming to the

corporation in person or by placing a telephone complaint. The complaint is

registered and forwarded to the appropriate government official either manually or

through a wireless communication system. The appropriate measures to redress the

citizen’s complaint are taken.

The above manual process has inherent disadvantages:

1. There is possibility of delays in the movement of paper from desk to desk

resulting in delays in the redressal process.

2. There is a strong chance that complaint forms may get misplaced during the

process.

3. The tracking of complaint by the citizen is difficult and time consuming, and

one is not able to ascertain quickly whether the correct person is handling the

grievance in the right manner.

4. Grievances may not always be prioritized correctly and the government

officials best able to deal with certain types of complaints may be overlooked.

5. There is no system in place generate and find patterns in the types of

grievances being filed by the citizens. Such a system would enable officials to

take proactive decisions and encourage urban planning.

6. There are no established reporting practices for higher officials. A system is

needed to make sure that the public grievances are being handled in a just

and efficient manner and to enable officials to make informed decisions.

Salient Features of the proposed system

Municipal Reforms Cell has built JANAHITA (Public Grievance and Redressal)

application through which citizens can register their complaints with the corporation,

either through the internet, phone, facebook, whatsapp or in person. The computer

system assigns a Complaint Number, which they can use to track and monitor the

progress on the complaints redressal.

The Salient Features of JANAHITA:

o Easy and systematic method to register complaints and track the

redressal.

o Prioritization of complaints

o Complaints forms are structured to enable better problem analysis and

assignment.

o Interfaces to Web, Phone, IVR - Interactive Voice Recognition systems,

and Walk-In with Paper-Form.

o The citizen is assigned a computer-generated Complaint-ID and can track

the complaint until it is resolved. This introduces transparency to the

system through computerization and online tracking.

o Dynamic MIS Reports allow government officials to run Reports on the

Complaints by city, ward, street, department, complaint type, date, etc.

This helps in planning and preventing recurring problems in specific areas.

o Automatic routing of complaints to appropriate officials.

o Dynamic, up-to-date complaint statistics, accessible to the public,

allowing for greater civic awareness and citizen participation.

o An easy method of communication between the ULB Officials and the

citizen.

This guide is meant for the ULB officials who would be using the system extensively.

The interface for both the citizens and the ULB Officials is the same. The only

difference is that the citizen is only exposed to a limited set of functionality which

includes complaint registration, complaint tracking, responding to the ULB Officials

queries and a view of the reports.

Overview of PGR System

The above figure gives a high level overview of the entire PGR System. The citizen

can log a complaint either online on the internet, through the phone to the call

center or manually through a paper form submitted to the municipality. In all the

Figure 1: High level System diagram for the JANAHITA

three cases the citizen gets a complaint number back which can be used to track the

complaint.

In all the above cases the complaint eventually reaches the PGR Software. The PGR

software routes the complaint to the inbox appropriate municipal officer based on the

rules defined in the system. The rules are typically based on the mapping of the

complaint type and the jurisdiction to municipal users. Should the complaint area or

jurisdiction be in doubt, the system passes such complaint to the Grievance Officer,

who in turn is able to forward the complaint to the appropriate officer. The system

ensures that complaint is clearly the responsibility of one person at any point of

time, thereby reducing confusion and duplication of work.

When the municipal officer logs in the system, he can view all the complaints which

have been routed to his inbox. The municipal officer can

• Take appropriate action to redress the complaint

• In case of any query about the complaint, the municipal user can

communicate with the citizen

• Forward the complaint to the appropriate officer

He can also update the status of the complaint to know about the action being taken

against the complaint.

The citizen can at any point of time come to the municipalities website and see the

action being taken against the complaint.

The system has an in-built reporting feature, whereby a number of reports are

generated in real time. The reports are also available in the public domain.

The first screen of JANAHITA is as follows::

Citizen’s View of the PGR Application

The citizen uses the PGR system primarily for

1. Lodge Your Grievance

2. Track/Search a Grievance.

Information required for registering a complaint is collected in a structured format to

enable the system to route the complaints to the appropriate official, and to enable

the ULB to run reports on the system.

1. Lodge Your Grievance

Complaint Registration Form

The details taken during grievance registration can be divided into 2 broad categories

1. Complainants details: Name, address and contact details

2. Complaint details: The complaint department, type of complaint, title,

description and location of the complaint.

Complainant’s Details

This section captures the details of the complainant. It consists of the following

fields:

Field Name Description

District Name* Select District Name

ULB Name* Select ULB Name

Name* Enter first name.

Street Address* Enter the street name and address.

Pin Code* Enter pin code of the city/town.

Phone Number Enter the phone number. It should be in the following

format: 080-54272736.

Mobile Number* Enter the mobile number. It should be in the following

format: 98450-223456.

Email Address* Enter the Email Address.

N.B.: Fields marked with a ‘ * ’ are compulsory

On screen, the fields will appear as follows:

Complaint Details

This section consists of complaint details. It includes the following fields:

Select Ward* Select the complaint Ward from the dropdown list.

Select Street Select the Street from the dropdown list.

Grievance Category* This section consists of a list of the broad categories

of complaint types. Each type is further divided into

subtypes that may be selected from the dropdown

list. Complaint types include Engineering Section,

Health, Education, Horticulture, Veterinary,

Information Technology, etc.

Grievance Subcategory* Select subcategories from the dropdownlist.

Is Other If the complaint type is different from the types

mentioned above then the citizen may give his own

complaint type by selecting “Yes”.

Other Complaint Types Enter the complaint type apart from the types

specified in the list.

Complaint Location* Enter the location where the problem has occurred.

Details of Complaint* This section gives the citizen a chance to give a

detailed description of the complaint such as the

exact nature of the problem, its duration, etc.

Upload File/Photograph * Upload a file or image related to the complaint.

Enter above Image text * Enter the Captcha Image in the given text box.

On screen, the Complaint Details section of the form will appear as follows:

After entering all the details click on Submit Complaint. The complaint is then

submitted to the corresponding officer within the ULB. An Acknowledgement will be

displayed as shown in the following Fig.

On submitting the form the next screen informs the complainant that their complaint

has been registered successfully. The complaint is allotted a Complaint Number,

which the complainant should communicate in all future communication with the

ULB. Citizen can also use the complaint number to track the complaint.

In the above example, the Complaint Number is GOK/JH/ENG/15-16/319.

2. Track/Search a Grievance

Citizen can track their complaint using the Complaint Number and Mobile

Number. The Screen for this is as follows:

After entering the Complaint Number and Click on GetStatus button, the following

screen will be displayed:

Citizen can know the status whether it is opened or Closed by the above screen. If

the status is closed, Citizen can download the Action Taken Report by clicking on the

Green button.

After Entering the Mobile Number also Citizen can track the details of complaint, the

screen is as follows:

OFFICIAL Administration

The complaints of the citizen is Redressed by the ULB Staff. The ULB staff is assigned

an account in the system. An account in the PGR system is signified by a unique

username and password assigned to the ULB staff. To get a valid account in the PGR

system, please contact the administrator.

ULB staff can check the complaints assigned to them by looking at their inbox. The

ULB staff can look at their inbox by a process called logging in to the PGR System.

LOGIN

Please click on the City Administration link on the PGR Home page to log in to the

system. You will get the following screen. Please enter your assigned user name and

the password. And then click on the Submit button.

On clicking Submit you get the following form.

Here you have following options.

� Lodge Your Grievance: You can Register Complaints by clicking on this link.

On clicking the Registration of Complaints form is displayed. This form is

same as that of the citizen Register Complaints form that has been

explained earlier in this document. It consists of different modes of

Complaints they are:

• Paper Form

• Councilor/Representative

• Watsapp

• Face Book

� Track/Search a Grievance: You can track the complaint based on

Complaint Number and Mobile Number.

� Pending Complaints: This is your Inbox and displays all the complaints that

have been assigned to you and which are in OPEN Status.

� Dashboard: This allows you to look at various reports in the system by

querying on various parameters.

Pending Complaints

On clicking the Pending Complaints option you get the following form. Here you

can see the table of complaints listed with details like Complaint Number,

Grievance Date, Complaint Name, Complaint Telephone, Mobile No, Resolution

Date. If you want to see the full details of the complaint with options to redress

the complaint then click on the Complaint Number link.

On clicking the Complaint Number link you get the Complaint Details Form. The

Complaint details form is as shown below. The ULB official will have the option to

CLOSE the complaint as shown in the screen shot, by choosing the Close option from

the dropdown. Upload an Action Taken Report when the status is closed. It is

mandatory.

After entering all the details click on Submit.

Upon clicking Submit you get the following form. You can see the complaint details

with the comment added by the concerned officer in Complaint Messages box.

DashBoard:

Here you can see the table of complaints listed with details like Online Complaints,

Manual Complaints, Complaints over Phone, Complaints Through Facebook.

Upon Clicking on the Numbers link the table of Complaint details will be displayed.

Log Out: - It is a good practice to log out from the system as soon as you finish

processing of the complaints. To log out, just click on the Log Out link.