The Ministry of Railways has launched new IT initiatives
In a move to provide more hassle-free services to railway users, the Minister of Railways, SD Sadananda Gowda launched new IT initiatives/applications recently. These initiatives have been developed by Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS), an autonomous organisation under the Ministry. Gowda also through remote control inaugurated the new Rail Neer Plant at Ambernath, (Mumbai) of Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), a Public Sector Undertaking of Ministry of Railways.
In his inaugural address, Gowda said that the Indian Railways with its Passenger Reservation System has the distinction of having one of the largest and robust citizens centric IT systems in the world. As the number of trains and the services of Railways are growing constantly, matching IT systems should also be developed simultaneously to meet the demands as also to provide state of art IT solutions to the ever increasing aspirations of the passengers. Indian railways need to use IT services extensively in passengers services, freight services, bring operational efficiency and staff welfare.
Gowda said that realising importance of IT in reaching out to passengers, several initiatives were announced in budget speech which includes — next generation ticket reservation system, wi-fi in trains and stations, real-time tracking of trains and rolling stock, mobile-based application for passengers, station navigation information systems, e-booking for retiring rooms and many others. In order to provide quick and efficient services to our freight customers, online wagon demand registration was also announced in the railway budget.
The Minister of State for Railways, Manoj Kumar Sinha said that development of these applications by Railways’ own organisation is a matter of great pride. He said applications of IT solutions will bring transparency and would also ultimately bring relief to the common man. He said that CRIS and IRCTC are the organisation of Indian Railways working in the fields of providing best passenger amenities. He called upon the railway officers to continue to work for developing more IT initiatives and for more passenger friendly measures.
Chairman of Railway Board, Arunendra Kumar said that it is really commendable that the Indian Railways has in-house developed five railway user friendly IT applications in one shot. “I salute the CRIS for this spectacular feat. Our IT organisations are not working for commercial motive but work for public service motive and in fact are no less than e-commerce giants like Flipkart, Amazon, et al. We are fully committed to use IT solution for bringing transparency and efficiency in deference to the wishes of the PM,” he said.
Member traffic, Railway Board, DP Pande stated that the future is bright and this core group of professionals in CRIS and domain experts have been moving at a fast pace. They have already delivered dynamic pricing at short notice.
Vandna Nanda, MD, CRIS said that the organisation has been at the forefront of not only developing, operating as well as maintaining the most intricate and vital software programmes that run present day Indian exceeds Railways like PRS, UTS, FOIS, COA, IREPS to name a few but also maintains the network on which these pan India programmes run. It may surprise many here to know that the number of passenger transactions that Indian Railways handles in one single day far exceeds the total booking done by all the scheduled airlines in the entire world in a day. CRIS handles the systems that generate, on an average, Rs 450 crore for the Railways daily through its PRS, UTS, and FOIS, she added.