2011-2012

[PROJECT REPORT]

Project Name:

SELF EMPOWERMENT (Providing employment through online services)

Team Members:

Section D - Group 5_B31 Frana James Frincy Clement Kirtana G Seema Golekar Jayantwin Katia Raminder Sidhu PGP/15/219 PGP/15/220 PGP/15/221 PGP/15/222 PGP/15/224 PGP/15/238

Document Type Dated:

Project Report August 30, 2011

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CONTENTS

The System Development life cycle........................................................................8

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INTRODUCTION
Project Self-empowerment, through its website, aims at creating employment opportunities for the underemployed. At the same time it provides a cost-effective option for job requesters to post jobs online. The Waterfall model was used in designing the given system. The Self-empowerment website serves as a platform thereby bridging gap between the employers and workers when it comes to simple tasks like Transcription or translation of audio/textual matter. These tasks can be carried out by the workers at their convenience; likewise, the requesters need not hire a permanent workforce, can post tasks with fixed timelines and pay-per-task basis. The workforce of a country inducts students every year following their graduation. Through this project, we would seek to reach out to these college students during their pre-graduation period, thereby enabling them to have a source of income without spending too much time away from their studies. In addition, people who are unable to work from the workplaces and having similar constraints such as housewives, physically challenged people, and elderly people who have retired from their jobs. These people are qualified or can be trained to perform the tasks posted on Self-empowerment. There exist similar websites which use English as the mode of communication; we will however include tasks which require knowledge of local languages as well. The system in carefully designed to provide more flexibility in language with regard to the existing system. Our aim is to bring about a revolution by providing employment to a diverse group of people who require a source of income but cannot follow the fixed working hours schedule or those who prefer working from home.

VISION STATEMENT
To empower the various sections of society in India by providing them with an opportunity for self-empowerment. This is an India-specific site wherein jobs would be made available in the regional languages, starting with Malayalam, once the people are familiar with the concept. In the near future, our website would have created a scenario where the college students will manage their own expenses; Retired people will not be dependent on their children financially, and have a source of income in addition to having a useful way to spend their time; Housewives will be able to earn an income by working from home.

SYSTEM ANALYSIS
IDENTIFICATION OF NEED

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A major problem India faces today is our growing population; every year 16 million students graduate from universities in various disciplines, yet we face unemployment. There are opportunities being wasted as there is a mismatch between the demand and supply of skilled labor. Sadly, people are unable to perform the job despite being talented and possessing the right skill set to do the job. This can be due to a number of reasons such as inability to travel to the workplace or willingness to work for a fixed number of hrs. We aim to satisfy this latent demand by provide a forum for the requesters to post their job requirements on our website while providing our workforce an opportunity to earn money. We will also be targeting the housewives. In India it is observed that majority of the women who are married prefer to be housewives. In this way huge pool of talent gets wasted. So in order to make use of all that knowledge capital, this provides a platform for housewives to work from home while taking care of the family. The last target group is the elderly people. It is a common perception that the elderly people are not productive and cannot be a source of income to family. This is most knowledgeable and experienced talent pool which can be very useful for jobs like accounting etc. The project makes business sense for both, the requesters and workers. It eliminates the need for infrastructure in the form of office space or computers, there is no need for a fixed payroll, maintenance cost etc for a requester to get his job done. For the worker there is greater flexibility in timings and choice of work he or she wants to do and also the freedom to work from home. Advantages Fast and easy access to information The system is simple, user friendly and flexible The tasks are simple and can be performed by people possessing basic reading, writing and listening skills. The tasks posted can be completed within a short span of time. PRELIMINARY INVESTIGATION The initial investigation was carried out by analysing similar working models, including websites such as Amazons Mechanical Turk. This is a crowd sourcing internet marketplace that provides employment to people who are in need of jobs or people who have constraints on getting a job. English is the most widely spoken language in the world and used as a basic language for working in Mturk. This has helped many people earn money for their leisure spending and for some people a source of income. Fact Finding Techniques We used a few fact finding techniques to analyse the need, impact and the flexibility of business process. Research and Site Visits Valuable information was obtained by visiting the NGO s in the proximate areas. Computer trade journals and reference books were used for more information. Information regarding similar problems and software packages were obtained.

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Observation Observation of situation prevailing around,understanding of the system. Questionnaires Surveyes were conducted through questionnaires.

COST BENEFIT ANALYSIS Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) estimates and totals up the equivalent money value of the benefits and costs to the community of projects to establish whether they are worthwhile. In developing cost estimates for a system, we need to consider several cost elements. Among them is hardware, personnel, facility, operating and supply costs. The Investment cost includes cost of getting a domain name. Operational cost includes the wages for two employees who will be employed as the administrators for 24*7, the maintenance cost and the cost incurred during the despatch of cheques. The revenues would come through the 10% commission for every task posted by the requester. A fixed fee of INR 20 is charged to the user for every cash withdrawal. FEASIBILITY STUDY The main objective of feasibility study is to test the technical, social and economic feasibility of developing the given system. This is done by investigating the existing system who have a similar working model and generating ideas about a new system. TECHNICAL FEASIBILITY With regard to the processing facilities, the possibility of using a bureau or, if inhouse equipment is available, the nature of the hardware to be used for data collection, storage, output and processing and on the system development side,the feasibility of the various ways of acquiring the system was considered.In this project, the existing system is examined first and generated ideas about the new system. The poposed system was evaluated from the technical view point like volumes of data, trends, frequency of updating, cycles of activity etc. and is found to be feasible SOCIAL FEASIBILITY Impact on organization structure, authority, salary levels, group relationships and jobs was considered, analysing costs of education and training, communication and consultation, job improvements and hidden costs like those caused by hostility, ignorance and fear.The project is tested for social feasibility by examining the improvements of jobs and the working enviornment of people on the network and is found to be socially feasible. ECONOMICAL FEASIBILITY

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The cost evaluation was based on Cost of Operation of the existing and proposed system Cost of developmnt of proposed system Value of the benefits of the proposed system OPERATIONAL FEASIBILITY Operational Feasibility study is performed to check whether the system is operationally feasible or not. Using command buttons throughout the application programs enhances operational feasibility. So maintenance and modification is found to be easier.

PROGRESS CHART
Schedule Stages of Development Proposal Webpage Development System Investigation System Analysis Site map and work flow design Home and inner page design, data base creation Testing Project Submission Presentation 27 Jul Jul- 0129 Aug 04Aug 07Aug 12Aug 19Aug 21Aug 30Aug 01Sep

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SYSTEMS DESIGN
METHODOLOGY
The Waterfall model is used in the development of this project. The phases are organized in a linear order. The project begins with a feasibility analysis. The feasibility study included technical, economical, operational feasibility. The feasibility study revolves around investigation and evolution of problems, identification and description of candidate systems, specification of performance and the cost of each system and the selection of best system. On successfully demonstrating the feasibility of the project, the requirement analysis and the project planning begins. The design was done according to the requirements specified in the requirement analysis.

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The System Development life cycle

Requirements Analysis The following Business Requirements were identified:

The Website will act as a virtual job-market facilitating the exchange between workers and requesters. Each user can have only account. A requester can request for any number of tasks to be performed. Likewise, a worker can choose to perform any number of jobs. Each job may/may not have qualification criteria. Each job will have clearly defined requirements to help evaluate the performance of the worker. The fee for a given task will be made by the requester before it can be listed on the website. For every task successfully completed, amount would be credited in the virtual account of a worker. Withdrawals can be made only after a predefined amount has been accrued. Accurate Banking Account Details will have to be provided by the workers for them to receive payments.

Self Empowerment Project Report Date: 30/08/2011 The website will be functional 24*7.

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System design
A website should be designed to help requesters place a job after making a certain payment. Requester has to define his requirement of the job and the final output requirement briefly. This request is then validated by the admin only if the payment is made by the requester and if the brief requirement is mentioned of the job. Once the job is validated to be floated on the website, it is placed on the available tasks page. HITs are basically Human Intelligence Tasks i.e. the task is defined according to the qualification required to do that job. Once the HITs is defined the of the task it is placed on the website. The worker will be able to do the job only if he is able to meet the minimum qualification required to do the job which is generally defined by the requester. This task is then uploaded on the website and then the tasks are visible to the worker. The worker selects the task, completes in the defined amount of time and then uploads it back on to the website. The task is now visible to the requestor, who can view it and see whether it is satisfactory or not. This work if satisfactory as per the requirement then it is accepted and then the amount is credited to the workers account. The amount can be redeemed only after INR 500 has been accrued and it can be withdrawn in the multiples of 100. The account can be closed can be closed by user and the total money can be redeemed. The amount once approved, is sent to the person. 1.Design assumptions

No. 1. 2. 3. 4.

Assumption The Requesters and Workers have access to Computers. The Requesters and Workers have access to Internet. The Workers have basic proficiency in English or Malayalam. The Requesters will be willing to pay for the job upfront.

2.Design constraints No. 1. 2. 3. 4. Constraint As the project is being carried out on a Pilot scale, only four tasks will be considered. Accrued amount can be withdrawn from the virtual accounts only after pre-defined levels have been reached Only English and Malayalam languages will be used Money transfer will not be carried out through Netbanking, physical payment to the workers will be carried out in the form of

Self Empowerment Project Report Date: 30/08/2011 No. Constraint Cheques

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English Language is the primary mode of communication Malayalam will be the secondary mode of communication Four types of jobs included in the project o Transcription: People will be requested to listen to Audio clips and transcribe the same in English. The Audio clips can be in English and Malayalam. Translation: Requesters can upload screenshots or Pdf documents of the write-up in Malayalam to be translated into English. Writing tasks: Requesters can request for specific writing tasks such as writing Articles, Report writing, Summarization of a given text. Data Entry: Requesters can upload the files which are to be used as the source for the date entry activities.

Software requirements(COMPONENTS OF WEBSITE) 1. Web Pages a. Home page with Login/Register options. b. Registration page for Signing up New users. c. Individual Pages displaying Vision Contact details Help Section

Initiatives Information about Self-Empowerment. d. User Profile Page with user details, Links to Self-Requested tasks and other Available tasks

2. Admin Area a. Rate users according to their work approval/rejection by the requesters.

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b. View submitted works and their remarks by requester & worker & update/delete works 3. Data Storage a. Up to 1 GB of data storage b. Separate tables for data storage c. Data access interface for admin 4. Technical Specifications Technologies ASP-.NET, C#, MS SQL Total Hosting Space 1GB FTP Accounts 1

Self Empowerment Project Report Date: 30/08/2011 Data Flow Diagram

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Database Structure:
Database Structure

Work ID Work Details Payment Languages StrtDate EndDate Rating PayMade PayDetails Madepay Filename Uploader Deadline Working status Completed Timespan ID ID

Accepted Works ID

User Account

Username WorkID Work Result file Accepted Dsiplay Task payment amount

Fname Lname Username Password Qualification Address Accountno Bank

Pay Request

DOB EngRating MalRating Email AccountBalance

Username Amount Reqdate Paid Paydate

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User Manual:
The website can be accessed at www.selfemp.in The 3 types of users for Self-empowerment are Administrator, Job Requesters and Job Workers. Admin: There will be a single administrator for the website and he/she can login using the Admin credentials. The Admin page will consist of the following links: Results: This webpage will list out the tasks that have been submitted by a worker. o In addition, this link will also permit the admin to change the rating of ones work depending on the work performance. In order to do so, the admin should select the tasks which have been completed and edit the rating of the person depending on the work approval/rejection by requester. Running Tasks: This link shows the pool of currently available jobs. Pay Requests: The payment requests made by the workers will appear on this page. o Once a request has been made by a user, the admin will have to approve the payment request. Upon approving this request the account balance Password Recovery function: A password recovery function has been enabled for the retrieval of password for users in case of forgotten passwords. Requester: New users can sign up for an account with Self-empowerment free of cost on www.selfemp.in by clicking on the Signup link. There is no registration fee or restriction on the number of users registering for Self-empowerment. A single user can act both as the worker and the requester. In order to register an account, the user will have to provide certain personal details with the Bank Account details. These account details will be strictly confidential and not disclosed to third parties. Each Bank account will be linked to a single user. Likewise, each user will have a unique user name and email address. Upon logging into the user account by entering the user credentials, the user will be routed to the User home page which will contain the following links My Account: The user account details will be visible under this tab. o The user can View and Edit ones details on this page.

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The account details will contain, in addition to the personal details, the Account balance, i.e. the Amount accrued by the user by performing various tasks. o In order to withdraw money from ones account, the user will have to click on the Claim your pay link. Money can be withdrawn only when the user has in excess of INR 500 in his account, money can be withdrawn only in multiples of 100 and a fee of INR 20 will be levied each time towards Postage charges. My Task: The user can check on the self-uploaded tasks on this page. o New Task: In order to upload a new task, the user should click on the New Task link and provide details pertaining to the given task. In the Transaction Details, the requester should mention the details regarding the payment ( Eg. Cheque instrument details). o View task: In order to view the result of a previously uploaded task, the user should select the task in question. If the task has been performed satisfactorily, the requester can approve the task and the amount would subsequently be credited to the workers account Tasks available: The tasks uploaded by the other users will be visible on this web page. Upload Work: If a task has been performed by the user, the target file has to be submitted here. Worker: In addition to the above tasks the worker can perform the following functions: Upon logging into the user account by entering the user credentials, the user will be routed to the User home page which will contain the following links My Account: The user account details will be visible under this tab. o The user can View and Edit ones details on this page. o The account details will contain, in addition to the personal details, the Account balance, i.e. the Amount accrued by the user by performing various tasks. o In order to withdraw money from ones account, the user will have to click on the Claim your pay link. Money can be withdrawn only when the user has in excess of INR 500 in his account, money can be withdrawn only in multiples of 100 and a fee of INR 20 will be levied each time towards Postage charges. o Rating: The user is given a default rating of 100. Certain tasks have a minimum rating requirement to perform a given task Rating is influenced by the efficiency of work done by the workers. A workers rating is decreased if the tasks submitted by the worker o Account Balance: The account balance displays the amount accrued by the user for all the tasks performed by the given user. My Task: The user can check on the self-uploaded tasks on this page. o New Task: In order to upload a new task, the user should click on the New Task link and provide details pertaining to the given task. In the Transaction Details, the requester should mention the details regarding the payment ( Eg. Cheque instrument details). o View task: In order to view the result of a previously uploaded task, the user should select the task in question. If the task has been

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performed satisfactorily, the requester can approve the task and the amount would subsequently be credited to the workers account Tasks available: The tasks uploaded by the other users will be visible on this web page. o View Task: The workers can view the task details which will be available on the available tasks page. o Accept Task: To accept a task the user should click the Accept Button. Once accepted the task is removed from the available tasks page. The accepted task will become void unless it is completed within the stipulated deadline and submitted. If a task is accepted and not submitted, then it would lead to a reduction in the rating of the user. Upload Work: For every task that has been accepted by a user, a file will have to be submitted to by the user. For eg, a word document with the translation/transcription of a given audio clip. o To submit a given file, click on the choose file button and select the file to be uploaded. Testing strategy: Once the Website was designed it was subjected to three rounds of Testing before implementation. Unit testing was be carried out to check how effectively the developed site is serving our functional needs. System Integrated Testing (SIT) was be carried out to ensure that the developed site functions effectively as a unit, it should be easily navigable and usable by the various users.

A final round of User Acceptance Testing (UAT) was carried out with Test subjects. Screenshots of the Website

Passwo rd

User log in

HOME PAGE

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Details required for creating user details in the database

SIGN UP PAGE

Amount Withdra wal

Edit User Details

My Account

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TYPES OF WORK AND LANGUAGES USED Task End date Payme nt amou nt Min Requirements

Creation of a new task