DESIGN AND IMPLANTATION OF A SECURE COMPLAINT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM WITH INTEGRATED SENSITIVE DATA LEAK DETECTION

In order to access essential public and private services such as banking, healthcare, education, voting, employment, mobile money registration, and international travel, citizens in Malawi depend heavily on the timely issuance of public-service documents, including the National Identity Card, passport, and driving licence. Public-service application processes, however, often require individuals to interact with separate administrative workflows managed by different agencies, and these processes may provide limited visibility into the progress of an application once it has been submitted. Delays, unclear status information, and the need to visit multiple offices in person can create additional barriers, particularly for citizens who live far from urban centres or who have limited time and resources. Fragmented channels also make it harder for applicants to know which documents are required at each stage, whether a submission has been received, or when the next administrative action is expected.
This paper presents Mala-Link, a citizen-centred platform designed to consolidate selected public-service application workflows in Malawi through a common web and mobile interface. The platform focuses on services associated with the National Registration Bureau, the Department of Immigration, and the Directorate of Road Traffic and Safety Services. By bringing these workflows into a single digital environment, the system aims to reduce the need for repeated physical visits, to provide clearer status information, and to support both English and Chichewa so that a wider range of users can interact with the interface in a preferred language.
The web frontend is implemented with Next.js, the mobile application with React Native, and the backend with Node.js and Express. PostgreSQL stores operational application data, accessed through the Prisma ORM. The system supports application submission, document uploads, status tracking, administrative status updates, notifications, bilingual language support, and a lightweight blockchain-style audit ledger. The ledger uses SHA-256 hashes and previous-hash links to make inconsistent changes to recorded audit events detectable. It is a single-process, locally persisted ledger rather than a decentralised blockchain network, and is intended to improve the detectability of unauthorised or inconsistent modifications to audit records rather than to claim the security properties of a distributed consensus system.
Functional test cases documented in the project report cover login, application submission, document upload, status tracking, and administrative status updates. Informal user interaction also formed part of development and helped to identify usability issues during implementation; however, no formal survey instruments or structured participant studies are available. The platform does not connect to the production databases of the relevant government agencies; therefore, the work demonstrates an implemented application prototype rather than a live inter-agency government integration. The paper describes the system design, its audit-ledger mechanism, preliminary functional evidence, and the limitations that must be addressed before any claim of operational deployment or institutional adoption can be made.