Integrating ICT in Traffic Police Department in Uganda: Design and Development of Traffic Case Management System (TCRIS)

Abstract

The study was about the development of Traffic Case Records Information System (TCRIS) that would ease storage and retrieval of traffic cases in the Traffic Department of the Uganda Police. The method used to manage traffic cases is manual; information collected daily is written on paper and stored in files for reference, thus making the captured cases susceptible to loss, easy access by unauthorized people and destruction. The researcher set out to study the current system, analyze the needs and then improve on the system by designing and developing a Traffic Case Records Information System. Data collection techniques such as interviews and observation were applied to get the necessary information from the Traffic officers in the Traffic Department at the Central Police Station, Kampala. The system developed captures the defaulters’ bio data, traffic offence committed and the charge for the traffic offence. The TCRMS makes the use of the camera that captures the photo of the defaulter and the biometric gadget that captures the defaulter’s thumb print for police reference. All these are centrally stored in the database but are sharable with migrations department, Bank of Uganda (BoU) and Uganda Revenue Authority (URA) which government departments work closely with police in regard to such offences. Different programming languages were used during the development of the system including Visual Basic for the front end and SQL Server2005 for the back end. The system is thus user friendly in the way it inserts, retrieves and updates user information.

Keyword: Traffic, Records management, court, customer care