Two third-year students of the Government Engineering College in Karuppur have developed a web-based complaint feedback system for the Salem city police based on the inputs given by City Police Commissioner K. Shankar.
T. Karthik and G. Jayaraman of the Computer Science and Engineering Department volunteered for the project and managed to complete it within three months.
A.M. Kalpana, Head of the Department, said they used to have meetings with the city police regarding cyber security. In one of the meetings, the Commissioner suggested such a feedback system. The students initially developed the system in English and later it was also made available in Tamil. The system was recently introduced at all the 18 police stations in Salem city limits.
The receptionist can enter details regarding the complainant and the complaint on to the system and the details can be viewed from the Commissioner’s office. Police personnel would later check with the complainant about the police treatment.
Karthik and Jayaraman are natives of Salem and wards of daily wagers.
“I have been attending short-term courses regarding web development, besides regular classes, and used to work on mini projects. This project gave me an opportunity to practically apply my skills. We developed the basic framework of the system within a week. It was installed and linked to the Commissioner’s office within a month,” said Mr. Jayaraman.
Centralised monitoring
Mr. Karthik said they almost had 30 topics under which complaints could be registered and feedback boxes were also provided next to the name of the police personnel who would have handled the complaint.
He added that the system had been developed based on router-IP address binding technique and at present, only police personnel would be able to access it.
The Commissioner said they needed a centralised way to monitor complaints registered at police stations and their status. The system was developed to eliminate issues like non-receipt of complaints and indifferent treatment. After the introduction of the system, the number of complaints had increased three-fold, he added.
“If the complainant is not satisfied, we will conduct re-enquiry and grievances redress camps,” he said, and added that they were planning to add more features into the system for analysis.