17-12-2012, 11:48 AM
INFORMATION SYSTEM OF INDIAN RAILWAYS
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INTRODUCTION
Indian Railways is a Department of the Government of India, under the Ministry of Railways, and is tasked with operating the rail network in India.
Indian Railways has a total state monopoly on India's rail transport. It is one of the largest and busiest rail networks in the world, transporting seventeen million passengers and more than two million tons of freight daily. IR is the world's largest commercial or utility employer, with more than 1.6 million employees.
The railways traverse the length and breadth of the country; the routes cover a total length of more than 63,327 km (39,500 miles).]As of 2008, IR owned about 225,000 wagons, 45,000 coaches and 8300 locomotives and ran more than 18,000 trains daily, including about 8,984 passenger trains and 9,387 goods trains.
Railways were first introduced to India in 1853. Indian Railways operates both long distance and suburban rail systems.
USE OF IT BY INDIAN RAILWAYS
Indian Railways has been a pioneer in the use of IT in India. IT was first adopted in the 1960s, when computerized passenger and freight revenue accounting, payroll and inventory management were introduced using IBM 1401 computers placed in zonal data centers.
Objective
Freight revenue enhancement
Passenger revenue enhancement
Improved and optimized service
Two Fold Role of IT
ROLE 1: An information highway
In this role IT provides information across the organization where and when required, through a number of standard applications that allow capture of information at the point of generation and then dissemination of the captured information.
ROLE 2: A Personal Productivity Tool
It is a tool for increasing productivity at all levels. Several pre-packaged applications like Office suites, website management, e-mail etc. fall into this category.
NEED OF CRIS
Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) was established in 1986 by the Ministry of Railways at Chanakyapuri, New Delhi. It was to be an umbrella organization for all computer activities in the Indian Railways. They were also entrusted with the task of the design, development and implementation of the Freight Operations Information Systems (FOIS), along with it’s associated communications infrastructure. This Centre started functioning from July 1987. It is an autonomous organization headed by a Managing Director. CRIS is mainly a project oriented organization engaged in development of major computer systems on the Railways. CRIS has acquired special knowledge and expertise in the field of informatics. With such rich practical experience, a dedicated team of professionals and its own R&D effort, CRIS aims to be a leader in this fast developing field. Today, CRIS has come a long way with its activities encompassing the entire gamut of design, development, implementation and maintenance of large online applications, such as Freight Operations Information Systems (FOIS) and Passenger Reservation System (PRS) of Indian Railways. CRIS approach focuses on new ways of business combining IT innovation and adoption while also leveraging an organization's current IT assets. CRIS works with the Indian Railways to build new products or services and to implement prudent business and technology strategies in today's dynamic digital environment.
PASSENGER RESERVATION SYSTEM
PRS started in 1985 as a pilot project in New Delhi. The objective was to provide ticketing system for reserved accommodation on any train from any counter, preparation of train charting and keeping a proper record of the money received. This was implemented all over Indian Railway later on. With this implementation any passenger can get a reserved ticket from one destination to another station of India Railway from any Passenger Reservation Systems counter of Indian Railways.
PRS networking of entire Indian Railways completed in April, 1999.
PRS is running currently at 1,200 locations, Deploying 4,000 terminals, covering journeys of 3,000 trains and executing ONE MILLION passenger transactions per day.
Internet booking of tickets was started In August 2002.
Internet booking timings extended to 4:00 a.m. – 11:30 p.m. from March 2005.
Unreserved Ticketing System (UTS)
More than 1.2 crore Rail passengers travel in unreserved coaches and trains every day and thus form the bulk of rail users. For this category of passengers Railways have introduced the facility of Computerised Unreserved Ticketing System. It was initially provided at 10 stations of Delhi area in the first stage as a pilot project on 15 August 2002. Another 13 stations of Delhi area were provided with UTS counters in the second stage on 2nd Oct, 2002.
UTS will provide the facility to purchase Unreserved Ticket 3 days in advance of the date of journey. A passenger can buy a ticket for any destination from the UTS counter for all such destinations which are served by that station. The cancellation of tickets has also been simplified. Passengers can cancel their tickets one day in advance of the journey from any station provided with a UTS counter. On the day of journey, the ticket can be cancelled from station from which the journey was to commence.
Indian Railway is constantly looking for new ideas to simplify and streamline procedures for the convenience of passengers. In this endeavor they have introduced several path breaking technologies on the Railway system over the years.