International Institute of Information

Technology, Pune-57

DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER ENGINEERING

Project Synopsis

Academic Year: 2019 -2020 Semester: I Year: B.E Date:

Project Title: Blockchain-based Grievance Redressal System.

Project Domain: Blockchain, Security

Whether it is inclined towards either of following National thrust areas or

others:

HEALTH & HYGIENE, AGRICULTURE, ENERGY SECTOR, TRANSPORT

SECTOR, COMMUNICATION & NETWORKING, QUALITY EDUCATION & E-
GOVERNANCE

(Please tick the relevant Thrust Areas) or any other

__________________________________________ (Please specify)

Sponsorship if
any:_____________________________________________________________

Name of External Guide (if any)

1. Problem Statement: A three level escalated system for grievances. Student
will register the grievance using this system. Request will go to the committee
members of the institute. If resolved within a specified time, then it will be
closed, else it will be escalated to the Head of the department. The final level of
escalation is the Principal of the college.

2. Objective/Aim:

● A web application that accepts grievance from grievant and passes it on

through the 3-levels.
● Create a web application where the respective authorities can solve the
grievance or pass it on to the next or lower level according to the
requirements.

● A web application, providing the progress record that the grievant can
track and view the replies of the authorities for solved grievances.
● Provide a dashboard for the users to see his own as well as other’s
grievances, and to support them.
● Provide statistical data for analysis.
● A web application, providing the dashboard for each level and
representing solved, unsolved and in progress grievances for each level.
● A web application that enables the student, authority to not accept the
solution if it is not as per expectation.
● A web application that provides student anonymity irrespective of
escalation level
3. Abstract:

A grievance can be termed as an official statement of a complaint about

something believed to be wrong or unfair. However, the intent of the grievance
goes in vain if there is no proper system that justifies the issue. Thus, we
provide an invention which is an application that handles all the grievances in
such a way that the grievant problems are catered to in a proper manner,
eliminating ignorance and ensuring complete satisfaction. In order to explain
the system, we have considered the following scenario:

Grievance system for students seeking education from International Institute of

Information Technology, Pune.

This is an escalated system that provides a student dashboard for management

and submission of grievance(s) categorized as per the college. The system is
based on blockchain technology that stores the grievance as an immutable
entity. Moreover, when there are any updations on the matter, the changes are
added as a block to the open grievance thus ensuring efficient tracking of its
entire life cycle. The system would also provide the facility to append a block
grievance chain after a specified timespan for unresolved or ignored action. As
the system is implemented using blockchain, tampering of the grievance by unfair
means is reduced extensively.

4. Related Work:

Initially, a survey to find similar current systems was conducted wherein

current grievance portal requires grievant to write the grievance and attach the
supporting documents. However, there is no such timeline that the grievant can
follow. Although the user identity is anonymous, there is no specific time period
assigned under which the authority is supposed to resolve the grievance. This
leads to the possibility of mishandling of the grievance or it is left unresolved.

While conducting the survey we also encountered few institutes having their
own grievance system, however ignorance and inefficiency was a common
concern.

In order to address these issues, this invention makes use of blockchain as its
prime technology which keeps track of the grievance in such a way that it is
immutable. Hence, we can say that the data updated in the blockchain doesn’t
change and is kept authentic. As a result, the authorities have to work properly
as the data inserted cannot be changed. Moreover, the middleware algorithm is
written in such a way that the grievance is forwarded to the higher level of
hierarchy after a specific period of time if left unattended or unresolved.
At present, there is no common interface between the committee, Head of the
Department and the Principal. Hence, this application bridges the gap between
the students and the respective authorities in a hierarchical manner by
providing complete information related to the grievance which was uploaded.

5. Innovative concept and relevance of the topic:

● This invention will be a three-level system, scaling from the college

grievance cell to the Principal.
● It uses the blockchain technology, wherein data integrity and security are
maintained.
● Thus, there is no external data manipulation or data abuse as the transfer
of control is fully automated.
● The grievance will be passed on to higher authority after the deadline.
Thus, the authority will have to address the grievance and there's no
misuse of power.

● Thus, it makes the system transparent and, in this way, it empowers the
students.

6. Market potential and competitive advantage:

This blockchain based grievance redressal system can be deployed in any

organisation wherein there is a requirement of a platform for the people
associated with the organisation to submit their complaints and issues. For
instance, our product can be deployed in:

❏ Government Sector
❏ Educational Institutes (Scaling up to A.I.C.T.E., A.I.I.M.S., I.I.M.,
etc)
❏ Corporate Bodies (M.N.C.s, etc.)
❏ Non-Government Organisations
❏ Private Agencies which includes hospitals, agriculture sector, etc.
7. Project Objective: Industry/ Product/ Research/Societal

● To create a decentralized web-app that accepts a grievance and passes it

to the predefined grievance hierarchy.
● To maintain data integrity and data transparency.
● To remove the misuse of power of higher authorities by transferring the
grievance directly to higher level after passing of the threshold number of
days.
● To provide a platform for students to voice their grievances.
● To maintain student anonymity whilst submitting a grievance.
● To provide statistical analysis of the total number of grievances submitted
to receive valuable insights.

8. Technical Details (Platform and languages):

Software Requirements and Specification:

Requirements Specifications

Front-End ReactJS

Hosting Platform Localhost ( testing ), AWS ( final

deployment )

Backend Truffle Framework

Blockchain Platform Ethereum ( Open source blockchain

network )

Database BigChain DB ( NoSql

blockchain-based database )

Operating System Windows 10

Hardware Requirements and Specification:

Requirements Specifications

Processor Intel i3 ( 7th Gen ) or AMD A10 or

above

RAM 8 GB

HDD 200GB

SSD ( Optional ) 128 GB

9. Technical Keywords :

D. Software
● D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
o D.2.2 Design Tools and Techniques
▪ Flow Charts
▪ State Diagrams

o D.2.3 Coding Tools and Techniques

▪ Program editors

o D.2.11 Software Architecture

▪ Data abstraction
▪ Information Hiding

E. Data
▪ E.1 DATA STRUCTURES
o Distributed data structures

▪ E.3 DATA ENCRYPTION

o Public key Cryptosystems

H. Information Systems
● H.2 Database Management
o H.2.0 General
▪ Security, integrity and protection
o H.2.4
▪ Distributed databases
J. Computer Applications
● J.1 ADMINISTRATIVE DATA PROCESSING
o Business
o Educational
o Financial
o Government
K. Computing Milieux
● K.4 Computers and Society
o K.4.1 Public Policy issues
▪ Use/abuse of power

10. Relevant mathematical models associated with the Project

Inputs:

Students:

● D - Details:
□ n - Name
□ yb - Year and Branch
□ em - E-mail
□ num - Phone no.
● G - Grievance:
□ t - Title
□ c - Category
□ sc - Sub-category
□ d - Description
doc - Supporting Documents

The sets are represented as follows:

S – {D, G} where

D – {n, yb, em, num}

G – {g1, g2, …, gn}

g - {t, c, sc, d, doc}

Functions:

Student:

1. Submit_Grievance()
2. Submit_Feedback()
3. Track_progess()
4. SignUp()
5. Login()
Committee/HoD/Principal:

Let ‘A’ be the set of the actions, defined as follows:

● fwd() - ForwardTheGrievance()
● rvt() - RevertBackTheGrievance()
● rsv() - ResolveTheGrivance()
● dbr() - DebarTheGrievance()

Functions of individual levels are as follows:

1. Committee: A – {rvt()}

2. HoD: A – {dbr()}

3. Principal: A – {fwd(), dbr()}

Hierarchy:

The hierarchy is as shown below:

● College – {principal, staff, grienvance_committee, students}

● staff – {teaching, non-teaching}
● teaching – {HoD, asst_prof}
● HoD – {h1, h2, h3, h4}
● asst_prof – {ap1, ap2, …, apn}
● non_teaching – {nt1, nt2, …, ntn}
● grievance_committee – {h, a, n, ∀ h ∈ HoD, ∀ a ∈ asst_prof, ∀ n
∈ non_teaching}
● student – {s1, s2, …, sn}
State Machine Diagram:

S = {Q, ∑, , Q0, F}

Q = {Student, Committee, HoD, Principal, Feedback, F}

∑ = {th, Sb, Fwd, Rvt, Res, SFb, RqFb, Dbr, S 1, S0}

1) Student = Sb.Commitee + SFb.Feedback

2) Committee = (Fwd + Th).HoD + Res.Feedback + Dbr.Student

3) HoD = (Fwd + Th).Principal + Res.Feedback + Rvt.Committee

4) Principal = Res.Feedback + Rvt.HoD

5) Feedback = RqFb.Student + S0.Committee + S1.F

Q0 = Student

F = Final State

th => Threshold ( )
Sb => Submit_grievance ( )
Fwd => Forward_grievance ( )
Rvt => Revert_grievance ( )
Res => Resolve_grievance ( )
SFb => Submit_feedback ( )
RqFb => Request_feedback ( )
Dbr => Debar_grievance ( )
Satisfied => { 0, 1 }

Success State -

A = {(Fwd + Th)[0...2] . (Rvt)[0...2] . Res . Rqfb . SFb . (S . A

0 + S . F)}
1

B = { (Sb . Dbr)* Sb(Fwd + Th)[0...2] . (Rvt)[0...2] . Res . Rqfb . SFb . (S . A

0 + S . F)}
1

F = Final State of State Machine Diagram

11. Names of the conference/journal where paper will published or Patent/

Copyright of project.

1) 2020 Fourth International Conference on Inventive Systems and Control

(ICISC)
2) 2020 International Conference on Computer, Electrical & Communication
Engineering (ICCECE)
3) 2020 International Conference on Industry 4.0 Technology (I4Tech)
4) 2020 International Conference on Inventive Computation Technologies (ICICT)

12. List of Conference/Journal Papers supporting project idea: (at least 10

papers + white papers or web-references)

[1] D. Miller, "Blockchain and the Internet of Things in the Industrial

Sector," in IT Professional, vol. 20, no. 3, pp. 15-18, May./Jun. 2018.
[2] T. Aste, P. Tasca and T. Di Matteo, "Blockchain Technologies: The
Foreseeable Impact on Society and Industry," in Computer, vol. 50, no. 9, pp.
18-28, 2017.
[3] R. Henry, A. Herzberg, and A. Kate, "Blockchain Access Privacy:
Challenges and Directions," in IEEE Security & Privacy, vol. 16, no. 4, pp.
38-45, July/August 2018.
[4] N. Kshetri and J. Voas, "Blockchain in Developing Countries," in IT
Professional, vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 11-14, Mar./Apr. 2018.
[5] Susan Athey, Christian Catalini, & Catherine E. Tucker, "The Digital
Privacy Paradox: Small Money, Small Costs, Small Talk", 2017, MIT Sloan
Research Paper No. 5196-17, Stanford University Graduate School of Business
Research Paper No. 17-14, 2017
[6] Marc Pilkington," Blockchain Technology: Principles and Applications",
2017 Research Handbook on Digital Transformations, edited by F. Xavier
Olleros and Majlinda Zhegu. Edward Elgar, 2017
[7] Yue Yu, Ran Liang, Jiqiu Xu, “A Scalable and Extensible Blockchain
Architecture” IEEE International Conference on Data Mining Workshops
(ICDMW), 2018
[8] Shuai Wang, Liwei Ouyang, Yong Yuan, Xiaochun Ni, Xuan Han, Fei-Yue
Wang, “Blockchain-Enabled Smart Contracts: Architecture, Applications,
and Future Trends”, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics:
Systems, 2018
[9] Yuan Liu, Zheng Zhao, Xingwei Wang, Zhenhua Tan, Guibing Guo,
Shuang Wang, “An Identity Management System Based on Blockchain”,
15th Annual Conference on Privacy, Security and Trust
[10] Saurav Chakraborty, Kaushik Dutta, Donald Berndt, “Blockchain-based
Resource Management System”, University of South Florida
[11] S.M.K.V. Pramod Kumar, K. Kiran Kumar, R. Sai Krishna, P.S.G. Aruna
Sri, “Incorporation of Blockchain in Student Management System”,
International Journal of Innovative Technology and Exploring Engineering
(IJITEE) (Volume: 8, Issue: 6, April 2019)
[12] Liu Xidong, “A smart book management system based on Blockchain
Platform”, International Conference on Communications, Information System
and Computer Engineering (CISCE)
[13] BigchainDB GmbH, “BigchainDB 2.0: The Blockchain Database”,
https://www.bigchaindb.com/whitepaper/bigchaindb-whitepaper.pdf
[14] Vitalik Buterin, “Ethereum: A Next-Generation Smart Contract and
Decentralized Application Platform”,
https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/White-Paper
[15] Nagpal, R. (2019), “And then there were 8 - a look at the leading
blockchain frameworks”, [online] Medium. Available at:
https://medium.com/blockchain-blog/and-then-there-were-8-a-look-at-the-lea
ding-blockchain-frameworks-7fc8c0b39680 [Accessed 31 Aug. 2019].
[16] Blockchain-council.org. (2019), “Top 10 Blockchain Platforms You
Need to Know About”, [online] Available at
https://www.blockchain-council.org/blockchain/top-10-blockchain-platforms-y
ou-need-to-know-about/ [Accessed 31 Aug. 2019].
[17] Ocean Protocol Foundation with Bigchain DB GmbH and Newton
Circus (DEX Pte. Ltd.), “Ocean Protocol: A Decentralized Substrate for AI
Data & Services”, https://oceanprotocol.com/tech-whitepaper.pdf
[18] Truffle Blockchain Group, “Truffle Suite”, https://www.trufflesuite.com/
[19] Ali, Z. (2019), “A Simple Introduction to Blockchain Algorithms”,
[online] Available at
https://blog.goodaudience.com/a-simple-introduction-to-blockchain-algorithms
-ca05b9bcc32f/ [Accessed 31 Aug. 2019].