National Human Rights Commission of India:
The use of information and communications technology in complaint
management
The National Human Rights Commission of India (NHRC) receives
approximately 100,000 complaints each year. To deal effectively and efficiently
with this number of complaints, soon after the NHRC’s establishment it
developed a software program called ‘COMMONS’, an electronic complaints
registration system. The software worked well but, as the number of
complaints continued to increase, an updated software system, the
Complaints Management System (CMS), had to be developed in 1996.
In 2000, the NHRC launched its website and developed a web-based version
of the CMS software. Features of the new system include: online lodgement
of complaints; an automatic acknowledgement of the complaint registration
by SMS and email; automatic reminders to the authorities about the complaint
by SMS and email; the ability for authorities to submit their reports about a
case online; and the online transfer of cases to appropriate state human rights
commissions in India.
The NHRC has now installed this system in four of the state human rights
commissions. It has also, in collaboration with the UNDP, installed the CMS
and provided training and technical assistance on it to the NHRIs of Jordan,
Nepal, Rwanda and Uganda. P175