Note prepared by S.Parthasarathy, FA & CAO, CR

I dream that an IR customer in 2010 would not be required to visit a Railway office/station except for actual transportation.He should have all interaction in his own environment provided that internet/IT services are accessible to customers. This should be fully realizable with large scale networking and web enabled services being launched by Railways. Accessibility is the key word as networking infrastructure has to ensure on-line information to management and staff as well as to customer.
The emerging technologies in the IT sector such as optical fibre, wireless, satellite, internet etc. can make this dream a reality. For proceeding towards this goal, we should plan for
** Infrastructure and Services including easy accessibility through establishment of communication networking infrastructure including Railnet, Internet
** Knowledge enhancement
** Mass campaign for awareness

The Visions drawn up by Shri Alok Bhatnagar and Shri Samar Jha have talked of the Indian Railways in general, while this paper talks mainly of the Accounts and Finance branches.
The Railways were the pioneers in the use of IT, with the installation of IBM 1401/1440 in all Railways and Production Units. However, having pioneered the use of Computers in the sixties, the Indian Railways faltered thereafter and the same vision, which made the successful introduction of computers 35 years ago, was perhaps missing. With the exception of PRS in 1986, there has been no major success story in the Indian Railways in the last three decades as far as computerization is concerned.

An analysis of the reasons why the Railways lost their way in computerization can perhaps help to ensure that these failures are not repeated.

(a) Lack of skilled and trained man-power for IT, which made development difficult;
(b) Lack of prioritisation in the scheme of things by higher management;
(c) Lack of adequate financial support for hardware and accessories;
(d) Inter-departmental conflicts.
(e) The shift from manual to computerised system requires 24/7/365 availability of a maintenance-friendly and easily upgradable system. This has not always been procured.

The above are some of the reasons why there have been substantial delays in implementation of MMIS, FMIS, PMIS, TMS, NTES, FOIS and MIS. Further, as is generally known, once a system is computerised, there is no way of going back to the manual system. The accuracy of data is also extremely important, as the manual system can work with approximate information, while a computer cannot.

These factors have also made the Indian Railways relegate the importance of computerization at the corporate level leading to development of software by individuals rather than co-ordinated development. In any office where an officer with skills and ideas was available, PC based computerization was done in an excellent manner. However, this has led to the problem of multiple and mutually incompatible systems and legacy applications which cannot be used when we move to a higher level of technology.

Future
There is no doubt that IT has come to stay and will have to be increasingly used in Railway working. However, development of IT by itself, without organizational re-structuring, could be of little use and may lead to unproductiveness.
To come to the specifics of IT usage, as far as Accounts and Finance departments are concerned, the following are some of the suggestions:

1. MMIS developed by Central Railway is an on-line network of Purchase Office, depots and Stores Accounts office. It is felt that this should be extended to cover centralized purchase agencies, all payment authorities, consumer departments and major vendors, to derive the full benefit of the system.
2. Similar on-line networking as MMIS should be developed for employees, major freight customers etc.
3. PMIS and FMIS/PRIME, which are under development by Northern and Southern Railways, can be of full use to the Accounts department as well the organization, if all the staff payments are taken over by the Accounts department, leaving the Personnel Department to concentrate on the core function of knowledge and quality HRD. The present system of preparation of bills by one department and passing of the same by another was, perhaps, relevant to an era when mistrust was the key word in Administration.
4. Smart Cards are being increasingly used by a large number of organizations. With the growth of e-commerce, card-based systems will become the most common on-line payment method. The Indian Railways should go in for Smart cards not only in its interface with customers, but also for all transactions with the employees. Apart from being used for payments, they can also be used as ID, for regulating passes and even the pension. This would ensure timely and efficient benefits to the customers, as well as the employees. With proper policy initiatives taken in the near future, it is felt that Smart Card deployment will yield benefits and should gain major presence in the Indian Railways by 2010.
5. One of the most important areas of Railway working, namely decisions on investment, is also one of the weakest areas of financial management. There is a need for investment decisions as well as proper management of project implementation. Project Management should cover all the aspects from conception to completion, including payments.
6. Till the Sixties, the supervisors constituted the main controllers at field level and were held in esteem within and outside the organisation. Loco Foreman, Station Superintendent, TIs. LIs, Commercial Inspectors, SOs and TIAs commanded respect in the organization and outside. Over a period of time, the status and authority of these supervisors have been eroded, reducing the efficiency of the organization. There is an urgent need to re-vitalise the supervisors, particularly in the Accounts department, as introduction of IT in a big way will need a complete change in the structure of the Accounts Department. The pyramid will have to be changed, with only about 20% staff in the JAA and AA category , about 60% in the supervisory category, with the balance being officers. Steps will have to be taken now, so that the organizational structure is in place by 2010.
7. Railways are handling huge volumes of cash in earnings and expenditure. In earnings, almost the entire passenger traffic is handled in cash and sizeable volume of parcel and goods traffic is also in cash. In expenditure, over 80% of staff payments are made in cash. While remittance of the cash to banks is a development which has taken place over the years, IT can be used

-- to avoid cash altogether, like the use of Smart Cards for staff as well as for passengers as mentioned earlier
-- to open payment gateway by major frreight customers for payment to railways and by vendors/contractors for receiving payments from Railways .

This would not only make the Railways more customer-friendly, but would also result in reducing expenditure and man-power.
8. Many of the present tasks done by Accounts department such as loans and advances of all types can be off-loaded to Banks and even PF , GIS and pension to Pension Funds in Public/private sector after negotiating with them to the advantage of employees.

Over the years there has been considerable progress as far as back office computerization is concerned. However back office computerization alone which has very little impact on the public interface is not sustainable in the long run due to lack of public pressure. Computerization of Railway reservation system demonstrates the effectiveness of the approach of front office application to back office and not the other way.
To achieve optimization of benefits, complete transparency in procedures would become imperative. A massive exercise of re-engineering our procedures would have to be undertaken by making use of e-commerce. Codes/manuals may have to be rewritten. Successful re-modeling would entail a greater cohesiveness and a closer interaction between departments so that the optimization of benefits through integrated computerization can be achieved.

It is important that the organization strives towards a singular vision for which one of the most important requisites is a restructuring of the IT organization. Owing to the diversity of technology infrastructure, database, tools, networks it is important that a decentralized IT cell be created with requisite skills so that standardized and specific domains of knowledge can be created and the mushrooming of local applications leading to a huge expenditure can be avoided. In fact one of the thrust areas after the development of RDBMS based systems by SDTs set up by Railway should be a complete integration between systems. This is critical in order to achieve the optimum results from the back end and front end applications and to ensure best service to our customers. The IT organisation should provide leadership and resolve all policy formulations and coordination issues.

IT is the only solution to a fast paced growth of organization. Some of the major annual milestones contemplated are

-- All Railway regulations, schemes annd forms on net and CD-ROMs
-- All works and stores tenders on nett
-- On line booking of all services avaailable to customers
-- File tracking and office-managementt system
-- All Railway payments and passenger receipts to be made through smart cards and internet
-- Land and buildings records to be coomputerized
-- Project formulation and management to be computerised

One theory for extinction of Dinosaurs is that they grew so large that the time-gap between information being sent to the brain and response received was so large, that by the time the message regarding tail being bitten could be responded to, the tail was already chewed off. The situation on the Indian Railways is somewhat similar. IT alone can correct this malady, provided IT is used along with re-structuring of the organisation.

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