BENGALURU: The new panel setup by The Central Railway Ministry is active on adopting Information technologies (IT) into the railway department. Anyhow railway has been using technology resourcefully in various sectors like passenger reservation and freight operation. ET reports that in the outlook of future, panel including twelve members of IT experts are working to espouse new technologies like cloud, analytics, predictive analysis and geographic information systems to reduce the complexities of its vast operation.           

Som Mittal, former president of NASSCOM, who is heading the 11-member information technology advisory council, said "the focus is to bring in more efficiency, build in more safety and integrate various operations of railways through technology." As part of its mandate, the council will "integrate and cover passenger services, freight services, asset management and train operations, safety and security as well as operations/enterprise management of the railways",

In 2013-14 the railway department got nearly 14 million revenue from its nearly 65,000  km route; however 26 percent of revenue was generated from passenger traffic and 67 percent from freight.

The panel is expected to submit its final report in next five or six weeks which mainly concentrates on revamping the current technology along with adoption of the best available technologies like Real Time Data (RTD) using GPS or GIS tech and using proximity sensors or RFID sensors to track locomotives and wagons.

“Indian Railways uses information technology in various aspects of its working, including passenger services, freight services, asset management and back-office applications," said Mohammad Jamshed, additional member of the panel (computerization an information systems), who is also part of the tech advisory council.

 "A number of IT applications and systems are in progress and being planned," he said.

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