The redesigned website of the Bangalore city police www.bcp.gov.in, which was recently launched by Chief Secretary to the Government of Karnataka, is plagued with numerous technical glitches.
Though the city police embarked on the project to revamp the website to make it more interactive and dynamic, the redesigned website does not appear to have achieved the objective with users finding its utility no different from the earlier version.
The home page of the revamped website has hyperlinks to many sections, but most of them are dysfunctional. At present, a click on most of these links do not land you on the intended webpage, instead redirects the user to the home page. Even the complaints section is dysfunctional. Missing persons information, most wanted list, unclaimed/lost vehicles sections are among those sections that are dysfunctional.
U.B. Pavanaja, a technology expert told The Hindu that the website isn’t interactive or dynamic. “It is designed only with static HTML pages. The developers haven’t connected the dynamic content server to the website and hence no interaction is possible. The website has no backend management,” he said. Besides, all the information on the website is not available in Kannada and that available has errors and is not in the unicode format, which makes it non-compatible on mobiles, tabs and other devices, he said.
When quizzed about the matter, City Police Commissioner Raghavendra H. Auradkar acknowledged that the website was not functional completely. He said that the redesigning of the website was an ongoing process and it would be developed further with the inputs from the users.
A senior official working on the project said that one of the unique features of the website would be the abandoned/missing vehicles section, where users can enter their missing vehicle registration number and know if it has been found anywhere. He said that the backend software for these features was ready but its deployment was delayed due to administrative reasons. “We are waiting for data from all the police stations across the city to build a database and adopt the dynamic content server to the website. Lok Sabha polls have put roadblocks for the project as police personnel are busy in election duty,” he added.
B. Dayananda, Additional Commissioner (Traffic), who overlooked the website re-design project, said that the need to develop a dynamic website for Bangalore city police was felt as there was no website which brought all the arms of the Bangalore city police under one umbrella and the new website was designed to be such a one.
Many wonder why the Police Department launched the website on March 13 before making the new features fully operational.
