The Party discipline inspection commission of Fuzhou, East China's Fujian Province has developed what it calls a "GPS system" to track petitions to ensure that all of them are addressed.

The Petition Allocation and Tracking System is aimed at correcting the "lazy and idle" attitude of officials toward petitioners and mishandling of petitions, the Xinhua News Agency reported on Wednesday.

The system would identify the role and responsibility of each official and department assigned to each case, and will be monitored by government officials in charge of petitions.

 "In the past, progress on the handling of petitions bogged down after we assigned petitions to middle-level officers," an official at the disciplinary department told Xinhua.

"Directors from different offices in the commission can easily see where the petition has been handled by whom," added the official. "It's like installing a GPS system on each case."

Memos can be added to the system to facilitate senior authorities' supervision over the petitions.

The system could also run a comprehensive analysis based on the inputs. One click and various data would show up, streamlining retrieval of information thereby making it more effective, read the report.

The disciplinary department recently used the system to resolve within three days a petition from two villagers over a land-leasing dispute involving a deposit of 50 million yuan ($8 million).

The department has so far accepted 1,319 petitions, with 131 resolved.

The cities of Putian and Quanzhou in Fujian said they are requiring officials to submit monthly and seasonal reports on how they are dealing with petitions.  Also, unresolved petitions have been assigned to different government departments in Fujian, and they will directly affect the officials' yearly evaluation.