A.
BISWAS,
FA&CAO(C),
=
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sp; =
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sp; =
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sp;
S.E.C. Rly.
Bilaspur. <=
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COMPUTERIZATION ON IND=
IAN
RAILWAYS
<=
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Computerization
on the Indian Railways commenced from the early 1960s. By that time it was =
seen
that in the Accounts Department the number of transactions were becoming
un-manageable. This also generated a huge quantum of paper work, which was
becoming very difficult to systematically access and process.
With this in view the IBM Unit Record Machine (U=
RM)
were procured. These were lik=
e the
earlier comptometers i.e. calculating machines with a small memory. By this
time, second generation computers were available & Indian Railways reac=
hed
an agreement with IBM to supply their 1401 machines.
These machines were installed at the newly setup=
EDP
centres on all the Zonal Railways, Production Units and the Railway Board.<=
span
style=3D'mso-spacerun:yes'> All these machines worked under
FA&CAOs, excepting the one at Railway Board. At the Board’s level, the Ac=
counts
directorate was the nodal point for computerization.
By 1968 on almost all the Zonal Railways and
Production Units, IBM 1401’s were functioning. Three applications were firstly ta=
ken up
which are as under:-
=
(i) &=
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p;
Operating
statistics;
=
(ii) =
&nb=
sp;
Freight
accounting;
=
(iii) =
;
Books
– Account current, etc.
Later the Material Management (Stores), Personnel
Management (Pay Roll, etc.), Passenger and fuel accounting application among
others were taken up.
The idea was to replicate the manual system on t=
he
1401 machines and the processing was done in the off line batch processing
mode. In the meantime, in the Railway Board an Accounting Development
Directorate (AD) had been created which was at the vanguard of all
computerization projects. A major feather in its Cap was the designing &
implementation of the Revised Classification of Expenditure & Earnings
w.e.f. 1st April, 1979.
<=
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ily:
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This
system continued till 1985-86. The next quantum jump took place from 1985-86
onwards when the Operating Information Systems (OIS) Directorate was set up=
in
the Railway Board. Under this, freight operations were to be computerized.<=
span
style=3D'mso-spacerun:yes'> The blueprint of this system ̵=
1;
Traffic Reporting & Controlling system(TRACS) was developed by and work=
ing
on the Canadian National Rail Road System (CNR). This was an upgraded versi=
on
of the original system that was developed by the Southern Pacific Rail Road
Company in 1963 in USA.
The language used was IBM assembler on the IBM 3=
60
platform. With a view to replicate this system on the Indian Railways, Cent=
re
for Freight Operating Information System (COFOIS) was set up in 1985. This =
was
to become the present day CRIS.
However, the purpose of this system was defeated=
at
its very inception in that the part pertaining to Traffic control systems w=
as
forgotten. Instead a watered =
down
version of Traffic Reporting was sought to be implemented and this process =
is
still on. The expenditure incurred so far runs into thousands of Crores. In=
the
meantime, by 1985, railway reservations had become chaotic. In this connection, Passenger
Reservation System (PRS) was designed and implemented by M/s CMC and has pr=
oved
its mettle over the years. The type of processing involved is On Line
Transaction Processing (OLTP).
Later on, the OIS Directorate under which the PR=
S had
been implemented become the C&IS Directorate at the Railway Board, under
which all future computerization was to be implemented.
Also, from the period 1986-88, the EDP centres o=
n the
Zonal Railways and Production Units were upgraded. IBM 1401’s after
rendering yeoman service had outlived their life & were replaced by
E.C.I.L-332 and ICIM-6000 Hardware. The mode of processing remained the off
line batch processing mode. The autocoder programmes of the IBM 1401 were
converted to MSCOBOL to cater to the new Hardware.
(III) Within 10 years, by the mid 1990s the drawbacks of the existing Applications Softw= are were fully exposed. This is because the MSCOBOL environment did not support multi processing and the Time Sharing Option (TSO). By this time, fourth generation ma= chines working under the UNIX operating system which supported TSO were available = in the market. With this in view existing ECIL and ICIM machines which were ye= t to outline their useful life were scrapped and the HCL - HP computers were procured. <= o:p>
. =
Further the existing Applications were totally
disparate and disjointed with the system becoming outdated, as they did not
permit SQL and IDBMS features. Also
by the year 1999-2000, a need was felt to switchover to the RDBMS features =
of
ORACLE. This relational database permitted both SQL and IDBMS facilities
including other advanced features. They were also modular and upgradeable &=
amp;
presently, ORACLE is the Industry standard globally.
(IV) From
the year 2000 onwards it was decided to integrate all accounting
applications. This was to cov=
er the
whole gamut of Accounts processing integrating Revenue, Expenditure and
Establishment (Pay Roll,etc) systems.
These are given below:-
=
(i) &=
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PRIME
(Pay Roll & Related Independent Modules)
=
(ii) =
&nb=
sp;
AFRES
(Advanced Finance Revenue Earnings &
=
=
Expenditure
System)
Presently, both PRIME & AFRES are in various
stages of implementation, on both Zonal Railways & the P.Us. In addition to these highly complex
applications, the Centralized Appropriation System (CAS) is also to be impl=
emented. The latter is being done by RITES.=
=
(V) &=
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In
conclusion, in the original TRACS system, there is a full module on Freight
Account of which CAS is an integral part.&=
nbsp;
This aspect seems to have been lost sight of.