Transparency- An Automated Information Verification System
Link: http://code.google.com/p/information-verification-system/
Project Proposal
Divij Wadhawan
Mehak Soni
Mudita Khurana
( 2008020)
(2009059)
(2009026)
Transparency- The Product
Paramount Programmers present to you the first automated
information verification system, designed specifically for IIIT-D. Our
aim is to create a system that can be used for information verification
of students (required by the employing company before providing any
internship) without any human intervention at the institute level.
Diagram 1: The concept
Goals and Objectives
The main goals of Transparency are many fold.
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To stop job seekers from providing incorrect or misleading information in their job
applications.
To automate the entire process of information verification between two parties.
To make the mail server functional without human intervention.
To reduce the time taken in the entire process of information verification.
To reduce the scope of errors in the verification process by automating it.
Motivation and Business Value
According to a survey conducted in 2001, as many as 80 percent of job seekers provide misleading or
incorrect information in their job applications. The purpose behind falsifying such information could
be tough competition for job positions, increase in unemployment, or even some fraudulent work.
Moreover, presently the procedure of employment/internship information verification is done
manually. This leads to some disadvantages such as delay in response time, providing wrong
information back to the company etc. The basic motive behind automating the procedure for
internship/employment information verification rises from the above two factors. Our basic aim is to
come up with a system which is faster, error-free as well as secure.
If an automated information verification system is developed, it would reduce the response time of
the entire procedure as well as nullify the work and effort of manpower in performing this task. It
would also be able to avoid manual errors such as extracting the wrong information from the
database or sending the wrong person’s information back to required company. The business value
for this product is even added by the fact that it is not prone to fraudulent ways of extracting
someone’s information without being authenticated to do so.
Users and Stakeholders
The software that we aim to develop will be very useful for our institute as its deployment will not
only nullify the manpower that was previously required to do this job, but it will also increase the
efficiency of the work done. Moreover, it will erase any human bias from the system which will be
beneficial for our institute, the students and the community on the whole. The students and the
institute will be able to rely on the system for appropriate and correct information to be given to the
querying authority. If we are able to achieve high quality in our software, it may further be deployed
in other institutes, colleges and universities, thus reducing the manpower and time required for this
work by a huge amount.
Features and Services
The features of our product are as follows:
1. Transparency is the first automated verification system, which would nullify the effort of
manpower to confirm with the student, as to whether he/she applied to the company or not
as well as his/her approval to send information to the company.
2. The database would contain data in an encrypted format, so that an adversary may not be
able to get access to student information, without being able to break the cipher.
3. Automated system would reduce the response time of the entire process, so it is more
desirable
4. It will take care of various security issues, such as some adversary trying to extract data
about the student or someone fraudulently listing their institute name as IIIT-D to get the
particular internship etc.
Functionality
Transparency is the first information verification system that automates the process of student’s
information verification at the time of applying for internships. When an e-mail is sent by the
employing company, regarding the verification or confirmation of a student’s information, the IIIT-D
mail server extracts the student’s required information from an underlying database, as well as
sends it to the student to confirm his approval to forward that particular information to the
company. If the student responds with an approval, then that information is sent back to the
company. Diagram 2 shows the high level architecture diagram for the same.
Diagram 2: High level architecture diagram for Transparency
We plan to use the Iterative Development Model as our software development process model. This
is so because even though we are clear with the requirements of such a system, we still need to
decide the algorithm that we would like to follow. Also, we feel that there might be some added
requirements with time, so the iterative development model suits our project needs. Diagram 3
shows the influence diagram for Transparency.
Development of such a system can be deployed for many other purposes too, such as for
information verification at the time of seeking a job, for automatically receiving some required
information from a database by sending an e-mail and so on. For our course project, we have
restricted our domain to information verification of students at the time of applying for internships
for now, and we may try to expand it to other domains in the future.
Diagram 3: Influence diagram for Transparency
Feedback from Users and Domain Experts
We interviewed a few professors as well as students at IIIT-D and got some very interesting feedback
from them. As told by a few of them, the application seems extremely useful in real life and will have
multiple applications. One of the professors also mentioned that even though it is an interesting idea
and something that has not been implemented yet, it might have some security concerns.
As told by the some of the students at IIIT-D, the application seems to be really useful, but will
demand CPU usage even when no email is coming for verification (since the application is always
running on the server). A student suggested that instead of sending all the details, only relevant
details of the student should be sent to the company. Some of the other suggestions included the
need of a generic format for the e-mail being sent from the company to the institute, extending the
product to serve as a solution to a variety of problems and usage of encryption for the student
database to keep it secure from any attackers who might get access to the system.
The Brick Wall
This section talks about a few issues which are beyond our area of expertise and thus, cannot be
resolved by our software:
1. If there is an electricity cut-off, the server gets shut down thus introducing a further delay in the
whole process.
2. The entry in the database may be wrong.
3. If the server gets switched off during the process of extracting data from the database, the whole
service is terminated.
4. We assume that the emails handled by our software will follow a set-format.
References
1. http://ericksmart.hubpages.com/hub/Avoid-Resume-Lies-and-Half-Truths
2. http://www.lansingbusinessmonthly.com/law-at-work/1325-resume-fraud-little-whitelies-arent-so-little-anymore.html
3. http://www.ehow.com/how-does_5173258_do-employers-check-school_.html
4. http://serverfault.com/questions/17819/how-do-you-verify-a-job-candidates-resume
5. http://www.marquetinternational.com/liars.htm
6.
http://www.google.com/imgres?q=student+icon&hl=en&biw=1280&bih=638&tbm=isch&tbnid=aig
mBd9SlvYCM:&imgrefurl=http://www.iconfinder.com/icondetails/44674/128/graduated_learner_student
_university_icon&docid=WfYR_1ohY1VwfM&w=400&h=400&ei=2c5HTqbFHYTLrQf42pjAw&zoom=1
7.
http://www.google.com/imgres?q=database+icon&hl=en&sa=X&biw=1280&bih=638&tbm=isch&tb
nid=5p9ApjLsfYfoUM:&imgrefurl=http://findicons.com/icon/63908/database&docid=Y5jBohKn1O9lc
M&w=256&h=256&ei=2a1HTquOBo_qrQeehLDaAw&zoom=1
8.
http://www.google.com/imgres?q=computer+cpu&hl=en&biw=1280&bih=638&tbm=isch&tbnid=0a
OA0blfFCT9CM:&imgrefurl=http://www.liewcf.com/intel-dual-core-cpu-computer1034/&docid=Jyat4rdlo9OfcM&w=400&h=271&ei=785HTrukPIy3rAfNsuDmAw&zoom=1&iact=rc&d
ur=1320&page=1&tbnh=122&tbnw=180&start=0&ndsp=18&ved=1t:429,r:7,s:0&tx=56&ty=11
9. http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/images/results.aspx?ex=2&qu=cloud#mt:0
10.
http://www.google.co.in/imgres?q=transparent&um=1&hl=en&sa=N&biw=1366&bih=665&tbm=isc
h&tbnid=EZF4gCfs-fG2DM:&imgrefurl=http://www.fonearena.com/blog/790/transparent-conceptphone.html&docid=PMYS05ZpmwW4M&w=500&h=500&ei=pwtITov8DcPqrAfSzvn4Aw&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=384&vpy=121&
dur=3233&hovh=225&hovw=225&tx=102&ty=118&page=1&tbnh=153&tbnw=153&start=0&ndsp=1
8&ved=1t:429,r:1,s:0