Taking a giant leap from manual filing system to e-office for its day to day activities, Pradeep Kumar, director general of National Academy of Indian Railways (NAIR), inaugurated the e-Office system at Indian Railways Institute of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering (IRIMEE). The inauguration was done remotely through video conferencing from NAIR, Vadodara in the presence of respective directors, CMD/RailTel and other senior officials.
The step is expected to bring in more transparency and efficiency in functioning. This will also promote green way of working by introducing paperless work culture.
RailTel, a miniratna PSU under ministry of Railways, has taken up the work of implementing e-Office system for Indian Railways. e-Office project is a Mission Mode Project (MMP) under the National e-Governance Programme of the government of India. The project aims to usher in more efficient, effective and transparent inter-government and intra-government transactions and processes.
Talking about the about the project, Puneet Chawla, CMD/RailTel, said, “We signed an MoU with Indian Railways for implementation of E-office over Indian Railway under Phase-I project for 50,000 Users. We have already implemented e-Office system in South Central Railway (Zonal HQ and all 6 Divisions of SCR - Guntur, Secunderabad, Guntakal, Vijayawda, Hyderabad and Nanded) and Trichy Division of Southern Railways apart from the 7 CTIs within span of mere three and a half months. Presently, 7692 users under Phase-I Project have been registered in e-Office Platform. Implementation work is on fast track, other zonal headquarters and one division in each zone will be completed by September 2019.”
E-Office is a cloud-enabled software that is deployed/hosted from RailTel Tier III certified data centre. It is based on Central Secretariat Manual of e-Office Procedure (CSMeOP). This is a giant leap forward to digitise and achieve greater efficiency and productivity for the Indian Railways. The product is built as single reusable system by bringing together independent functions and systems under a single framework to enhance transparency, increase accountability and transform the government work culture and ethics.
Indian Railways is one of the largest employers of the country and its offices cover almost every part of India. Indian Railways till date is burgeoned with manual ways to handle office documents. This not only makes the process slow but consumes more energy on its workforce. To change the scenario and bring the digital culture in Railways the implementation of e-Office has started. The aim of e-Office implementation is to provide reliable, efficient, and effective way to handle office files and documents.
RailTel took the initiative to build access from ground up to enable unparalleled e-Office infrastructure once the project was assigned by Railway Board (Transformation cell).
Currently four modules – File Management System (eFile), Knowledge Management System (KMS) Collaboration and Messaging Services (CAMS) and Personnel Information Management System (PIMS) will be the part of the e-Office system being implemented. The benefits will be visible once the system is fully put to use and manual file system is stopped. It will result in a delightful experience for the end user, e-Office will be a milestone in digitisation of Indian Railways. It will continue to be tool to foster improved reliability, efficiency and productivity. It will bring benefit to millions of employees of Indian Railways. e-Office promises enhanced transparency, increased accountability, data security and integrity, and promotes innovation by releasing staff energy and time from unproductive process and procedures. e-Office fosters paper-less culture which will not only save operational cost but also promote a green way of working.