The Minister of Railways Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu of Railways launched Rail Cloud, NIVARAN (grievance portal) and Cashless Treatment Scheme in Emergency (CTSE) scheme.
To achieve the goal of a single digital platform for Indian Railways a few foundational projects need to be implemented first, establishment of RailCloud is one such project.
Indian Railway has started a strategic IT initiative, christened IR-OneICT, for enterprise wide digital single platform with an aim to improve customer satisfaction, improve revenue and effective, efficient and safe operations. The RailCloud project was launched in association with RailTel and is one of the few foundational projects.
Speaking on the occasion, Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu said, “Efforts are being made to bring entire railway system on integrated digital platform. RailCloud is another step towards digitization of Railways. Rail Cloud works on popular cloud computing system. Most Important works are done through cloud computing. Also, this is going to reduce the cost and data may be safely ensured on the servers.”
RailCloud Phase-I has been sanctioned at the cost of Rs. 53.55 crore under PH-17, DF(3) in FY2017-18.
Potential Benefits of RailCloud:
- RailCloud will pave the way for swift deployment of application
- Maximising the usage of the available server and storage resulting in accommodation of more applications within same server space
- Minimising expenditure by acquiring new resources
- Server and storage space will scale up and down as per the demand
- Make system suitable to meet the higher demand at peak hours with less expenditure
- Security features can be updated in one go for all the applications hosted on the cloud
Source: DigiAnalysys
‘NIVARAN-Grievance Portal’ is the first IT application to be launched on the RailCloud. It is the platform for resolution of service related grievances of serving and former railway employees. The Grievance Portal will save significant revenue and at the same time user experience will also improve.
To provide immediate care to its retired employees in ‘Golden Hour’ Railway Board has decided to roll out a Cashless treatment Scheme in Emergency’ (CTSE), in empanelled hospitals, for retired employees and their dependent family members.
A web based system of communication between private hospitals and railway authorities has been developed wherein identity of the beneficiary shall be established using biometrics stored in Aadhar (UIDAI) server, eligibility shall be determined using Indian Railway database and emergency shall be verified by Indian Railway medical officer based on private hospital’s clinical report.
The whole system is online and even the bill processing shall be online. This scheme shall provide help to the retired railway employees at the time of need and at the same time will have a morale boosting effect on the serving employees.
At present the scheme has been rolled out in four metro cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai, based on the experience of this pilot the scheme may be extended to the whole of country.
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