Name of the Project:File Tracking System (FTS)

Name of the Organization: Jamia Millia Islamia (A Central University)

Jamia Millia Islamia,
Jamia Nagar,
New Delhi – 110025
India

Contact Information: Prof. Zahid H. Khan

Director, FTK-Centre for Information technology
zhkhan@jmi.ac.in

Brief description of the programme/project/initiative:

Our offices produce a lot of documents including letters proposals, notes, notices etc. which are
routed through administrative channels for processing. The expected outcome of such file
movement is timely actions and decisions. However, contrary to the expected output, many a times,
the administrative machinery, while processing these papers takes lot of time in routing the
documents from one-desk to another. Sometimes, the officials are too overloaded and file delays are
genuine while at times the documents are deliberately held back. The users of our administrative
systems have hard time in figuring out the status of their documents as this require lots of time in
moving from desk to desk.

The File Tracking System developed by Jamia Millia Islamia attempts to address the above said
issues i.e. to let users track their file using their computers and also to find out genuine overload on
offices.

Within nine-months of its implementation the system has compiled information on 49,969 unique
files created by university users. This statistics itself was never known to the University. As system
usage continue to grow, it would provide extremely useful data for analysis of organizational
processes and their improvement. The system is capable of providing information such as:

• Movement of file through different offices with date and action

• The top-n departments which receives/send files
• The average hops-per file in the University (2.32)
• The most efficient or laziest office
• etc.

Why was the project started?

The project was started with the aim to improve accountability of offices in dealing with files and
also to meet the objectives given below.

Objective:
• To allow users to track their documents from their desks.
• To let the officials find out the documents received by their office and their status.
• To let the administration access the document processing load on offices/officials
• To let administration rationalize the staff distribution in departments vis-a-vis the document
processing load on offices
• To let administration quantify their document processing efficiency
Target group:
• University administrative/teaching/academic/research staff
• Students

Geographical reach:
• Presently, within University premises or outside through VPN

Date from which the project became operational:

August 12, 2009

Is the project still operational:

• Yes

Points that make the programme/project innovative

• To the best of our knowledge and belief this project was first attempt of its kind in Indian
Universities
• Although the premises of the project remains very simple, it has potential to be very
effective in :
◦ Improving accountability of officials in organizations
◦ Making system transparent for the end users
◦ Improving the organizational processes by identifying the bottlenecks in file movements
◦ Identifying and rewarding efficient officials
◦ Quantifying the efficiency index of offices
◦ Justify human resource requirements in offices
◦ Justify human resource distribution across organization
◦ In ensuring that Service Level Agreement (SLA) is being met for the outsourced work
• The software can be easily adapted by any other organization

Achievements of the programme/project

• The system is in use for past 9-months across the University
• It ha recorded almost 50,000 unique files and more than 1,16,000 file movements during this
period.
• It is gradually having its bearing on accountability as users may bee seen carrying a copy of
File Status Report generated from FTS system while going to officials for reminders
• It is also helping officers to list work status of their respective offices

Challenges faced while implementing the programme/project/initiative and how they were
overcome

Challenge 1: To make the clerical staff use the system while dealing with files

Resolution:
(i) By involving top management in forcing file acceptance in their respective offices only
when the File is on the FTS system.
(ii) By imparting operational training

Challenge 2: Convincing the end users that the centralized File Tracking System in better than
their standalone Excel based systems.
Resolution:

By holding demonstrations of the program in front of the dealing staff with their
higher officials followed by subsequent training.

How can the programme serve as a model that can be replicated or adapted by others?
• The programme is very simple and generic for serving the needs of all kinds of offices
• The programme is very effective in quantifying the work load, bringing accountability,
transparency and efficiency in the system.
• The program results in minimizing the file-loss phenomenon, specially in Govt.
Organizations
• The adoption by new organizations would require bare minimum infrastructure and cost
• As the program provides advantages to each end-user it can be implemented with high
degree of acceptance i.e. with minimum amount of resistance.

Scalability and future enhancements

To ensure quick system acceptance, the present project was intentionally implemented with bare
minimum requirements. It definitely has scope to be enhanced in terms of functionality as well as
reach. The following points are indicative of the future work which we intend to undertake in the
second phase of this project:

1. Allowing users to subscribe to various alerts (E-Mail, SMS) on their respective files.
2. Escalating the file status to senior officials for suitable action in case the set “file hold time”
expires on a particular desk.
3. The programme may be used as a prototype for implementing “Inter-Organizational” File
Tracking System on cloud or other suitable infrastructure preferably using Open Source
Software.
4. The programme may be easily used at individual or office level depending on the
requirements of organization. At individual level each person would receive file on his/her
desk and accordingly their work can be tracked. At office level only file inward/outward
movement is recorded and as such the system would provide information at the office level.
System Snapshots

User Interface for usage of File Tracking System

A report showing movement of File through different offices with status
Report giving File Status during a specified period
Report showing file statistics and performance for a given user (Help Desk)
S.No. Name of the Department/Office Files produced
1 REGISTRAR'S SECRETARIAT 4052
2 ESTABLISHMENT BRANCH 3668
3 ADMINISTRATION BRANCH 2913
4 VICE - CHANCELLOR'S OFFICE 2890
5 FTK-CENTRE FOR INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY 1630
6 ESTABLISHMENT BRANCH - III 1123
7 HUMANITIES & LANGUAGES(OFFICE OF THE DEAN) 1101
8 BUILDINGS & CONSTRUCTION DEPARTMENT 1065
9 FACULTY OF EDUCATION (OFFICE OF THE DEAN) 1011
10 FACULTY OF ENGG. & TECHNOLOGY (OFFICE OF THE DEAN) 976
PURCHASE AND INVENTORY CONTROL OFFICE 888
Report Showing top-10 documents producing departments/offices