Rlys moves over 5 lakh files, 12 lakh documents online

Due to availability of e-office, majority of file work in Railways can continue smoothly without physical presence in offices.

NEWDELHI: In the past four months when the entire country was in various stages of the coronavirus-induced lockdown, the Railways has digitised over 12 lakh documents like letters, bills, office orders, project drawings and more than four lakh files, scrapping their manual handling and reducing not just physical contact between officials but also operational costs. The use of Railways’ e-office has grown manifold since the pandemic hit the country -- the number of e-receipts increased from 4.5 lakhs during March 2019 to March this year, to 16.5 lakhs in April-july this year; the number of e-files increased from 1.3 lakhs to 5.4 lakh during the same periods respectively.

The e-office platform provided by Railtel is a cloud enabled software developed by the National Informatics Centre (NIC) and aims to provide reliable, efficient, and effective ways of handling office files and documents. “Due to availability of e-office, majority of file work in Railways can continue smoothly without physical

PUNEET CHAWLA , Railtel CMD

presence in offices which is a boon in a time of crisis like this,” Railtel CMD, Puneet Chawla told PTI.

He said it was a big challenge for the team to complete the work during the lockdown phase as r e s o ur c e movement was restricted. “We couldn’t visit the division offices and the implementation work needed to be done remotely and it was very time consuming as well. The crucial part of implementation is the training of officials to handle the platform,” Chawla said. The official said since physical presence of Railtel officials and Railway users was not possible, the entire training was also done remotely using video conferencing and on call support.