The Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) designs, develops, implements and maintains most of the important information systems of

Indian Railways Indian Railways (IR) is a statutory body under the ownership of Ministry of Railways, Government of India that operates India's national railway system. It manages the fourth largest national railway system in the world by size, with a tot ...

. It is under the ownership of

Government of India The Government of India (ISO: ; often abbreviated as GoI), known as the Union Government or Central Government but often simply as the Centre, is the national government of the Republic of India, a federal democracy located in South Asia, c ...

and administrative control of the

Ministry of Railways A Ministry of Railways is a Cabinet department that exists or has existed in many Commonwealth states as well as others. It generally occurs in countries where railroad transportation is a particularly important part of the national infrastructur ...

. It is located in

Chanakyapuri Chanakyapuri (Sanskrit: चाणक्यपुरी; IAST: Cāṅakyapurī ) is a neighbourhood and diplomatic enclave established in the 1950s in New Delhi. It is also a sub-division of the New Delhi district and plays host to the majority ...

New Delhi New Delhi (, , ''Naī Dillī'') is the capital of India and a part of the National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCT). New Delhi is the seat of all three branches of the government of India, hosting the Rashtrapati Bhavan, Parliament House ...

. CRIS was established in 1986.

History

In 1982,

(IR) set up a central organization to computerize freight operations (COFOIS). In 1986, this was converted into a dedicated, autonomous organization (CRIS), an umbrella organization for all information technology-related activities on Indian Railways. It was tasked with designing, developing and implementing the Freight Operations Information System (FOIS) and its communications infrastructure. CRIS began functioning in July 1986 as an autonomous organization headed by an executive director (later renamed managing director). A unique feature of CRIS is the collaboration among domain experts from Indian Railways, CRIS' own technical specialists, and leading IT companies of the country. Systems managed by CRIS have been recognized by ''

Computerworld ''Computerworld'' (abbreviated as CW) is an ongoing decades old professional publication which in 2014 "went digital." Its audience is information technology (IT) and business technology professionals, and is available via a publication website ...

''.2005 Computerworld Honors Case Study
accessed 8 January 2007PCQUEST (India
Best IT Implementation of the Year 2006
accessed 8 January 2007 CRIS received the Prime Minister’s Awards for Excellence in Public Administration on 21 April 2008. CRIS held a symposium, "IT Can Happen in Government", in New Delhi on 1 July 2010 after a previous symposium on 6 July 2009. A seminar on

big data Though used sometimes loosely partly because of a lack of formal definition, the interpretation that seems to best describe Big data is the one associated with large body of information that we could not comprehend when used only in smaller am ...

was held in July 2014, followed by one on

smart cities A smart city is a technologically modern urban area that uses different types of electronic methods and sensors to collect specific data. Information gained from that data is used to manage assets, resources and services efficiently; in retur ...

in July 2015 and on mobility and mobile apps in 2018. CRIS seminars are held annually, with the most-recent one (on Digital Transformation of Large Enterprises) on 1 July 2019. In December 2019, the Ministry of Railways was considering a proposal to merge CRIS' operations with RailTel Corporation of India Ltd. However, the proposal has been shelved for the time being. E-Procurement System: Provides a secure, fair and transparent method of materials procurement through a web-based interface. It enables suppliers to securely upload their tenders to a central server in encrypted form, which can be decrypted only by authorized railway officials after the tender opening. All timestamps are authenticated by the National Physical Laboratory. The system is operational on all zone railways, and units and has been extended to

CORE Core or cores may refer to: Science and technology * Core (anatomy), everything except the appendages * Core (manufacturing), used in casting and molding * Core (optical fiber), the signal-carrying portion of an optical fiber * Core, the centra ...

RDSO The Research Designs & Standards Organisation (RDSO) is an ISO 9001 research and development organisation under the Ministry of Railways of government of India, which functions as a technical adviser and consultant to the Railway Board, the Zonal ...

RailTel RailTel Corporation of India Ltd. is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Indian Railways, Ministry of Railways, Government of India. It provides broadband and VPN services. RailTel was formed in September 2000 with the objective of creating a nat ...

and the

Kolkata Metro The Kolkata Metro is a rapid transit system serving the city of Kolkata in West Bengal, India. , it has two operational lines, a line from Dakshineswar to Kavi Subhash and a line from Salt Lake Sector V to Sealdah, for a total of . Four ...

. E-Auction, launched in March 2012, has been adopted by all zone railways and production units. A payment gateway was implemented in January 2012, and about 280

crore A crore (; abbreviated cr) denotes ten million (10,000,000 or 107 in scientific notation) and is equal to 100 lakh in the Indian numbering system. It is written as 1,00,00,000 with the local 2,2,3 style of digit group separators (one lakh is e ...

(2.8 billion) in online funds was transferred by February 2014.

Work

CRIS designs, develops, implements and maintains information systems for

. It has also developed and implemented the IT system for the

Andaman and Nicobar Islands The Andaman and Nicobar Islands is a union territory of India consisting of 572 islands, of which 37 are inhabited, at the junction of the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea. The territory is about north of Aceh in Indonesia and separated f ...

ship-ticketing, which it currently maintains as well. The number of projects handled by CRIS increased from three in 2000, to more than 80 by 2020. CRIS follows a mixed model of software development, outsourcing some development work while developing software in-house as per need.

Major IR projects

* Computerization of the Freight Operations Information System: FOIS enables management and control of freight movement, optimized asset utilization and the generation of invoices. Many of IR's larger freight customers pay through an electronic

payment gateway A payment gateway is a merchant service provided by an e-commerce application service provider that authorizes credit card or direct payments processing for e-businesses, online retailers, bricks and clicks, or traditional brick and mortar. The ...

interfaced with the FOIS. About 72 percent of the railway's freight revenue is paid electronically. * Passenger Reservation System (PRS): A nationwide online passenger reservation and ticketing system, developed and maintained by CRIS, was developed in C and Fortran on a Digital OpenVMS operating system using RTR (Reliable Transaction Router) as

middleware Middleware is a type of computer software that provides services to software applications beyond those available from the operating system. It can be described as "software glue". Middleware makes it easier for software developers to implement co ...

. Also known as CONCERT (Country-wide Network of Computerized Enhanced Reservation and Ticketing), it interconnects the four regional computing systems (in New Delhi,

Mumbai Mumbai (, ; also known as Bombay — the official name until 1995) is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the ''de facto'' financial centre of India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Mumbai is the second- ...

Kolkata Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , the official name until 2001) is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary business, comme ...

and

Chennai Chennai (, ), formerly known as Madras ( the official name until 1996), is the capital city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost Indian state. The largest city of the state in area and population, Chennai is located on the Coromandel Coast of th ...

) into a national PRS grid. It allows a passenger anywhere to book train tickets from any station to any station. PRS handles reservations, changes, cancellations and refunds, reserving over 1.6 million seats and berths daily. Complex rules, validations and fare-computation techniques are interwoven in the application. This system is currently under modernisation. * Next Generation e-ticketing (NGeT): The Internet-based E-ticketing reservation system, developed for IRCTC, that connects at the back-end to PRS. * Computerization of Indian Railways' Unreserved Ticketing System. Unreserved ticketing is a major component of IR’s ticket volume, and an important source of revenue. UTS delivers fast unreserved ticketing from dedicated counters, replacing manual printed-card tickets with centralized, online sales. The architecture integrates with handheld terminals, smart cards, vending machines and UTS Mobile app & website utsonmobile.indianrail.gov.in. * National Train Enquiry System, for latest train running times and live train tracking * Web-enabled claims: Web-based software enables the public to file and track claims online. * I-Pas is a comprehensive payroll and accounting system which has been extended throughout Indian Railways. * Workshop Information SystEm (WISE): A

MIS MIS or mis may refer to: Science and technology * Management information system * Marine isotope stage, stages of the Earth's climate * Maximal independent set, in graph theory * Metal-insulator-semiconductor, e.g., in MIS capacitor * Minimally ...

project for railway workshops in

Kharagpur Kharagpur () is a planned urban agglomeration and a major industrial city in Paschim Medinipur district of West Bengal, India. It is the headquarters of the Kharagpur subdivision. It is the largest, most populated, multicultural and cosmopol ...

Jagadhri Jagadhri is a city and a municipal council in the Yamunanagar district of the Indian state of Haryana. This town lies adjacent to the city of Yamunanagar. The demarcation line between the two is difficult to discern. Jagadhri is around 90 &nb ...

Ajmer Ajmer is one of the major and oldest cities in the Indian state of Rajasthan and the centre of the eponymous Ajmer District. It is located at the centre of Rajasthan. It is also known as heart of Rajasthan. The city was established as "' ...

, Kota, Charbagh,

Liluah Liluah (also spelled Lillooah) is a neighbourhood in Howrah city of Howrah district, West Bengal, India. It is a part of the area covered by Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority (KMDA). Liluah has a railway junction, which is the first sta ...

, Kanchrapara,

Matunga Matunga (Marathi pronunciation: aːʈuŋɡaː is a locality in the heart of Mumbai City towards downtown Mumbai. It is serviced by the Matunga Road station on the Western line, Matunga station on the Central Line and King's Circle station on ...

, Lower Parel, Parel,

Bhusawal Bhusawal is the largest municipal council (established in 1882) in the Jalgaon district of the Indian state of Maharashtra, situated along the banks of the river Tapi. The city emerged as a major railway junction during the British Raj, and s ...

Secunderabad Secunderabad, also spelled as Sikandarabad (, ), is a twin cities, twin city of Hyderabad and one of the six zones of the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) in the States and union territories of India, Indian state of Telangana. It ...

Lallaguda Lallaguda is a suburb of Secunderabad, India.Lallaguda Police Station
It is about 7 km fro ...

and Jamalpur. WISE provides a report for workshop management using the Oracle DBMS. *

Crew management Crew management for ships, otherwise known as crewing, are the services rendered by specialised shipping companies. Crew management services are an essential part of maritime and ship management that includes the management of all the various activ ...

: Crew Management System (CMS) software provides real-time railway crew information. Information includes location, status, train assignment, time off and continuing education. The software issues SMS alerts to management and supervisors. It can book crew for coaching, shunting and freight service. The software supports safety monitoring of the crew by inspectors, assessing crew knowledge with a quiz administered through kiosks in crew lobbies, and provides up-to-date safety circulars. * Control Office Application (COA): Enables rail-traffic controllers to manage trains in their section, and is operational in all division control offices. The COA interfaces with other applications (such as NTES) to provide train information to passengers and managers. Recently, the Real Time Train Information System (RTIS) that enables Satellite Navigation data from train locomotives to directly update the train position in COA in real-time has been partially implemented. * An ERP-based system was implemented at the Integral Coach Factory in Chennai in January 2012.

References

External links

Centre for Railway Information Systems (CRIS) website

"Giving an IT boost to Indian Railways"
''Express Computer'', 3 April 2006 *
Details of the July 1, 2010, symposium

Product designed for CRIS by Thinvent Technologies

National Train Enquiry System Guide
{{Indian Railways Information technology companies of India Railway companies of India 1986 establishments in Delhi Indian companies established in 1986 Companies based in Delhi