A WEB BASED SYSTEM FOR TRACKING RECORDS IN PRISONS

CASE STUDY: KISORO PRISON

By

AHISHAKIYE EMMANUEL

CERT SYSTEMS ADMIN, Theictlabs, NTINDA.

RegNO: 10/U/3226/ITD/PD

A Project Report Submitted to the Department of Computer Science in Partial Fulfillment of the

Requirements for the Award of Bachelors Degree in

Information Technology and Computing of

Kyambogo University

JUNE, 2013

Chapter One

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background to the Study

The term web based system has been defined in many different ways. A vision et al (2001) [2], defined

web based system as those applications or services that are resident on a server that is accessible using a

web browser and is therefore accessible from anywhere in the world through the web. Web based

management information systems are combination of hardware and software used to process information

automatically. Luke (2001) [39] stresses that the common trend in information management today

involves distribution of large quantities of data through a single interface. This is exemplified in web

accessible “information systems,” which grant users easy and powerful access to multiple information

sources through a single web page.

Saucer et al. (1997) [38] mentioned that systems could not be designed as standalone components since

they had to communicate, interact, access the same data and share information with their organizational

environment. Therefore, World Wide Web (www) should have come in to integrate part of an existing

information system by providing well-defined interfaces to standard application systems such as database

systems and computer networks. The World Wide Web (www) became one of the most important media

for sharing information resources. Programs, tracking of information, information monitoring, and

various other types of resources could be accessed through the World Wide Web (www) (Bing et al.,

2001) [4]. Research results, new findings, law offenders could also be put on the web from anywhere at

any time by the right people. Therefore, since www had provided a good infrastructure, Reports could be

accessed centrally by management of Uganda Prisons Headquarters using a web based Prison

Management Information System through the Internet.

Increasing demand for speed, accuracy, efficiency, effectiveness and administration coupled with

discerning consumers of services had meant that all types of organizations are striving for greater

productivity, while maintaining or enhancing quality within their services. Computers are being put into

use as tools of governance and management, this applied to both private and public organizations for

better centralized management. Hence a web based System for keeping records in prisons is a way that

can bring many methods of administering, recording and tracking of information into one working

environment. Kisoro prison has many methods of administering prisoners’ information which includes the

use of papers and files, type writers, thereby necessitating automation of the system being used. Harpreet

(2002) [18] mentioned that the use of World Wide Web (www) or computer system could enhance

organizations to improve on their communication and therefore effectiveness in service delivery.

Therefore, there was need for web-based computer system that could provide easy access of information

online and also provide accessibility to information from anywhere, anytime. This necessitated

Management to have access to the database. This was done by registering them into the system and then

giving the privilege to them once logged-in. This was provided at the login time and other unauthorized

users denied access.

There are various benefits associated with the web based systems for tracking records, these include: Web

based applications can dramatically lower costs due to reduced support and maintenance, lower

requirements on the end user system and simplified architecture. By further streamlining your operations

as a result of your web based application, additional savings can often be found. Web based systems need

only be installed on the server placing minimal requirements on the end user workstation. This makes

maintaining and updating the system much simpler as usually it can all be done on the server. Any client

updates can be deployed via the web server with relative ease.

There is no centralized management information system to keep track of prisoner’s records, manage

automatic generation of the prisoner’s information and reports for efficient and effective management at

kisoro prison. Currently the management of the kisoro prison (Uganda Prisons Service) is still using

papers and files system to keep track of information thereby leading to delayed work and time wastage.

This approach of generating prisoner’s information is totally manual hence requiring additional

manpower, time and produces a lot of errors and this may lead to inappropriate planning and financial

loss in future. More so, with the ever increasing number of prisoners, a lot of documentation and

recording has increased and this kind of paper work and manual handling of data is not a user friendly

way of collecting and managing information. This approach creates delay in creating reports more over

it’s a hectic and costly exercise. It is against this background that a web based information system for

tracking records in prisons that allows automatic generation of prisoner’s information, centralized

management and automatic generation of reports without errors is developed for kisoro prison.

Management of prisons in Uganda has long been a neglected area which has recently been incorporated in

the e-governance program of government of Uganda. Currently a rudimentary process of storing all the

prisoner data in manual files and registers is in place. The web based system for tracking records in

Prisons will integrate all the prisoner data into a single integrated system which will in turn result all the

information being present in a digital format. The system will be built with varied user access levels and

features such as prisoner identity (id) which will be attached to each prisoner profile and can be used as a

search key to find particular prisoner information.

1.2 PROBLEM STATEMENT

There is no web based system to keep track of records in prisons in Uganda kisoro prison in particular.

Currently records of prisoners, staff and equipments are kept in files using papers. This has led to loss of

information of some cases (crimes files), insecurity and data redundancy. Similarly, some cases have been

reported where some prison staff connives with clients (victims) to change and hide some information or

files hence leading to compromising the evidence of the matter. This has consequently resulted in time

wastage to handle cases, increased corruption and insecurity of important files hence making the whole

process costly.

It is against this background that a web based system for tracking records in prisons will be developed

that will allow stake holders access records immediately anywhere in the country, provide security by

authentication and also reduce redundancy.

1.3 objectives of the study

1.3.1 general objective of the study

The general objective of the study will be to develop a web based system for tracking records in prisons

particularly kisoro prison that will enhance the administrative capabilities of the jails in terms of

monitoring and security of the prison while improving the efficiency and productivity of the Prisons.

1.3.2 Specific objectives of the study.

I. To identify and investigate the requirements for building a web based system for keeping track of

records in prisons.

II. To design a web based information system for tracking records in prisons.

III. To test and validate the system developed during the course of study.

IV. To implement the system developed.

1.4 Scope of the Study

The study will be limited to the development of a Web based System for tracking records in prisons in

which; Management will be able to traverse through the system and will be able to retrieve the required

reports instantly to be acted upon, The system will be able to solve the delayed report production. The

system will be limited to provision of navigation features using a graphical user interface, capture the data

necessary, authentication of the users to the system, provision of security features, able to output reports

and accessible anywhere any time by the management with the help of internet.

The study will therefore to help the researcher in achieving the study goal and management on improving

their system. The methods that will be used for capturing information will be limited to observation,

interviewing, questionnaires and report and or document analysis.

1.5 significance of the study

The signifance of the study will be to make a web based System for tracking records in prisons that

process and store records beneficial in the following.

i. To the prison administrators (users), the system will be able to collect required prisoner’s

information and reports for the effective management of prisons.

ii. Also the system will ensure that no impersonation of the prisoners happens by proper validation

and authentication of the prisoner’s identity.

iii. To the government, the system will useful to manage and store the data of the prisoners hence

having updated records for the prisons and this will ensure proper monitoring of the prisons by

the top officials.

iv. To the records department and other workers, the system willincrease efficiency in the processing

of prisoners’ documents which will be finished by just a click of a button thus replacing the

former long paper collection process.

v. The study will help the researcher to gain skills in data collection through interviews,

questionnaires, observation, development of databases and the whole system at large.

Chapter 2

LITERATURE REVIEW

This chapter deals with the analysis of existing relevant literature on keeping and tracking information in

prisons, their benefits and limitations, the major general applications of the information system and the

importance and limitations they have as systems. It further stretches the development and architecture of a

web based system for tracking records in prisons.

2.1 Web-based System

According to Enrado (2000) [12] a web-based system should be an easy-to-use system that provided

Web-based access for all staffs, rules-based, entry of preferences and viewing of data, credential

management, and ability to retrieve information in prisons.

Dokas (2005)[11] on the other hand noted that in few years time, internet notably world wide web

(www), evolved rapidly from media of information sharing to a ubiquitous platform of several

applications that include web-banking, on-line trading, e-government, digital libraries, e-trouble shooting

and e-engineering. Basic reasons for the web records system’s rapid evolution are the numerous benefits

of distributing applications to all intended users cheaply, quick implementation with minimal resources,

connecting teams and increased customer satisfaction via this medium. It should also be noted that, use of

distributed databases is one of the common methods used in distributing information to different users.

Carter et. al. (2005) [6] confirmed that web-based system increased the convenience and

Accessibility of Management Information System services and information about prisoners in order to

develop prisoners details with an Integrated Management Information System. Web-based System made

work easier for an organization to produce presentations, dramatically speeding time to get the required

reports.

Advantages of using web based systems.

According to Jalan (2004)[31], organizations are moving fast to deploy web based information systems in

business solutions and engineering, so as to maximize the value of enterprise information, applications

and resources. Those that are successful will be able to meet today’s higher customer expectations and

rapidly changing business environment. In short, they will emerge as winners in the web-based

marketplace. The benefits of using web based information systems include:

I. Enhancing productivity of information: The customizable Management Information System

(MIS) enables users to tailor pages to suit role based, personal, or project-driven requirements.

II. Reducing integration costs: management information systems (MIS) facilitate quick, seamless

integration of existing new business systems, solutions, and custom applications. This enables

centralised access of information.

III. Speeding “time-to-knowledge”: Enhanced native search and categorization capabilities enable

organizations to provide true “federated search” providing unmatched Search precision across

both structured and unstructured enterprise sources in a single Query.

IV. Maximizing security: MIS leverages an advanced security model to ensure the integrity of

information, applications, and resources, that is, it provides single login authentication. Support

for industry standards, allows organizations to easily carry over existing security profiles and

meet even the strictest security requirements of enterprise information systems.

V. Simplifying administration: MIS solutions allow organizations to centralize enterprise wide

administrative efforts and streamline software updates and maintenance.

Limitations of web based information systems

I. Complexity. The provision of functionality we expect of a good database management system

(DBMS) makes the database system an extremely complex piece of software.

II. Size. The complexity and breadth of functionality makes the database management system an

extremely larger piece of software requiring big size hard disk and substantial amount of memory

to run effectively.

III. Higher impact of failure. The centralisation of resources increases the vulnerability of the system.

Since all users and applications rely on the availability of the DBMS, the failure of any

component can bring operations to a halt.

IV. The cost of DBMS. The cost of DBMS varies significantly, depending on the environment and

functionality provided. There is also the recurrent annual maintenance cost, which is typically a

percentage of the list price.

2.4 Current systems used for information record tracking in prisons in Uganda.

2.4.1 Manual system.

Here the information is captured and recorded on paper. The files are then kept in a file cabinet. Decide

which drawer to open, open the drawer, find the location in the drawer, place the document, update your

index and close the drawer. To retrieve data about a particular prisoner, get in to the drawer and search

files.

The manual system works well when the number of items to be stored is small.

The limitations of this approach are that papers can easily be lost or get torn at a faster rate leading to loss

of data. Also it’s more hectic and stressful exercise in case the number of items is large.

2.4.2 Spreadsheet application (file based approach)

Robert (1986) [16]. A file based system is a collection of application programs that perform services for

the users wishing to access information. Each program within a file based system defines and manages its

own data. Spread sheets have been applied in the storage of data about prisoners and information about

them.

Benefits.

I. Having files stored on computers, the data is accessed more efficiently.

II. Flat-file database are useful for certain single user or small group situations, especially

for maintaining lists such as address lists or inventories.

Limitations

I. Duplication of data. Some data is held by different programs. Wasted space and

potentially different values and or different formats for the same item.

II. Security. The system has poor security features and as result un authorized persons can

be able to access data.

2.5 Architecture of the developed system.

With the use of MySQL, HTML, CSS and PHP designed for the web development, the researcher

developed a system that is very fast, highly portable across different platforms that provided online access

to the database by the different users in different prisons in the country. This enabled Uganda Prisons

Department for its operations determined by linking to other prison branches in the country. The system

allowed users at different domains given by the administrator to have some privileges on the developed

system. Use of MySQL was to incorporate inbuilt backup utilities for periodic backups. MySQL

supported backup and restoration. It enabled management access reports whenever they were needed.

The information system architecture involves the design of organization and navigation systems to help

people find and manage information more easily (Sullivan, 2003)[56]. Nonetheless, many pages use the

basic three-panel structure, as illustrated by figure 2.1 that follows.

Figure 2.1: An illustration of the basic architecture of the developed system.

The top area contains global information about the site while the left side area contains

Navigation controls and links to commonly used objects, and the large central panel is home to the

substantive content of the portal. The global area is consistent across the system and often provides links

to a home page, contact information, accessories, and any other frequently used applications.

In addition, the navigation area provides a localized context for users by providing an immediately visible

and easily accessible path to related components in the portal while keeping the user from being

overwhelmed by the full breadth of the portal.

The main content area delivers the core information and application access that the users seek. By

framing this information and the applications in navigational frameworks, you

Provide users immediate access to locally related topics as well as global landmarks, such as the portal

home page.

CHAPTER THREE

METHODOLOGY

This chapter gives a description of how a web based system for tracking records in prisons will be

developed. These include; requirement identification; design; implementation and testing and validation.

However, the development process will be iterative, though it will be depicted as comparing of phases.

Figure 3.1 that follows shows the system’s development methodology.

Figure 3.1: An illustration of a systems’ development methodology for a web based system for tracking records in prisons. 3.2 Requirements identification

To identify the requirements of the system, various approaches will used as explained below.

3.2.1 System study and investigation

There was a thorough study of the existing systems in the Uganda prisons service particularly kisoro

prison in order to understand the loop holes before developing the web-based system for tracking records

in prisons. This was achieved through interactions, use of questionnaires, interviews and observations.

3.2.2 Interviews

Oral interviews were conducted between the researcher and the members of staff of kisoro prison

department, officers in charge of prisons and prisoners. This was instrumental in gathering information

about the current manual system of record tracking and its loopholes since it gave the researcher a chance

to interact with the system users. Different staff members were asked questions about how useful or

tiresome their current data keeping method is if compared to other systems. This helped the researcher to

take the decision of developing the standard automated system for tracking records in prisons. The

researcher interviewed 2 officers, 5 staff members and 3 prisoners to clearly understand how the current

system works.

Requirement

identification

Design

Implementation

Testing and

validation

Requirements

modification

Benefits of interviews

Interviewsgive the researcher the opportunity to motivate the interviewee to respond freely and openly to

questions. Also allows the researcher to probe for more feedback from interviewee, interviews permit

researcher to adopt or reward questions for each individual and quick responses from the respondent.

Demerits

Interviewing is very time consuming since the interviewees were give information according to their own

understanding and therefore difficult to organise data according to their views and therefore costly, fact

finding approach, success of interviewee is highly dependent on the systems human relation skills and

interviewing may be impractical due to the location of interviewees.

3.2.3 Observation

The researcher moved around different departments at kisoro prison to see how data was being handled,

how reports were being produced and what methods were in place for producing reports. Through

observation the researcher found out how data was collected and the methods used for producing reports.

Advantages of observation

It was direct method for collecting data or information as it helped the researcher in studying how data

was handled and kept. Data collected was very accurate and was very reliable. Problem of depending on

respondents decreased, this helped the researcher in understanding the verbal response more efficiently.

3.2.4 Questionnaires

In this approach, printed questionnaires were given to some of the prisoners and staff members to fill in

the blank spaces. This helped the researcher to know the operation of the existing system. Questionnaires

allow the analysts to collect data from large number of people while maintaining uniform response, when

dealing with large audience, no other fact finding technique can tabulate the same facts as efficiently.

Advantages

Questionnaires can be answered quickly, people can complete and return questionnaires at their

convenience, questionnaires produce relatively inexpensive means of gathering data from a large number

of individuals, questionnaires allow individuals to maintain anonymity and responses can be tabulated

and analysed quickly.

Disadvantages

The number of respondents is often low, there is no guarantee that an individual will answer some or all

questions, questionnaires tend to be inflexible. It is also not possible for the analyst to observe and

analyse the respondent’s body language and there is no immediate opportunity clarify vague or

incomplete answer to any question.

3.2.5 Documentary Review Some of the information will be collected by studying documents from within and out of the kisoro

prison. Information from Literature review clearly brought out the need for a computerized system to

serve as a records management system and how critical information circulation should be in such an

environment like a prison. However, most of the records have been printed on papers and could not be

retrieved since they had already been lost. This clearly indicated the need for a web based system for

tracking records in prisons that could keep and retrieve such information on demand.

Documentary review will also help the researcher to perceive the views of people elsewhere in the world

towards web-based systems. The researcher’s findings clearly indicated that there was a need for a web

based system for tracking records in prisons particularly kisoro prison.

3.3 System Design

The Database system will be developed using MYSQL and the programming frame work of the system

was done using HTML, CSS, PHP, and JavaScript.

The analysis of the requirements acquired in the requirements identification phase willled to the

development of the web based system for tracking records in prisons. There will be removing of

redundancies by normalization of the data in order to get the right material to be entered into the tables to

be used for the system. There will be the conceptual database design by having the Entity Relational

Diagram and the Entity Relations. There will be also the Logical design where entities, attributes, data

lengths were made to remove the redundancies in the system and duplicates. This will led to physical

database design whereMysql with PHP script will be used to design the system that enabled get the

graphical user interfaces to be used by the system as it is free software. The system design objectives

includes: Usability, performance, reliability, software architecture and package.

3.4 System Implementation

During system implementation, the system was able to run on windows XP and it was best suited for

Pentium 4 computers or higher processors with a speed of at least 500MHZ considerable amount of Ram

and 80GB hard disc space was required for proper functionality of the system. RAM of 512 MB and

above was recommended and a computer monitor with a high resolution and a standard keyboard and

mouse connected to the system.

3.5 system testing and validation

Software testing is a fundamental component of software quality assurance and represents a review of

specification design and coding. Unit and module testing was used during the process. During unit

testing, individual functions were tested to prove their functionality. This helped to reduce errors during

module testing where units were combined as one to form a module. A successful testing resulted into a

complete system that was tested as a whole to check for its capabilities and also techniques like black box

testing were also employed so as to achieve the system’s final objective.

The validation process involved checking the implemented system whether it confirms inputs to the

specifications. Several validation tests such as data and security were carried out to ensure that the system

can validate data input from the users, reject any data which is supplied in wrong format and prevent

unauthorised users from accessing the system resources.