JANAHITA- USER MANUAL

Municipal Reforms Cell,

Bengalooru
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

Figure 1: High level System diagram for the JANAHITA

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 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 Street
Grievance Category*
Grievance Subcategory*
Is Other
Other Complaint Types
Complaint Location*
Details of Complaint*
Select the complaint Ward from the dropdown list.
Select the Street from the dropdown list.
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.
Select subcategories from the dropdownlist.
If the complaint type is different from the types
mentioned above then the citizen may give his own
complaint type by selecting “Yes”.
Enter the complaint type apart from the types
specified in the list.
Enter the location where the problem has occurred.
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.