Rail track management goes online

Railways today launched web-based management system to monitor track maintenance and inspection online.
This is a great achievement to monitor the track on real time basis. This will bring transparency in the system, Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu said today after launching the IT application.
Management of track maintenance involves huge volumes of data statistics as well as dynamic analysis of various measurement, defects and planning, deployment of large resources.
Prabhu thanked all those involved in the project and said the railways has launched another e-governance platform along with the launch of the e-enabled initiative.
Hitherto the entire gamut of activities has been largely manual and a precious time is spent by engineering section in record-keeping and data-mining with maintenance planning. In the absence of unified field data, track maintenance planning remained mostly periodic or subjective.

Describing the system as "cost and time saving", he said "it has saved about Rs 1,100 cr in a zone. There were cost overrun due to delay in project implementation. The new system in engineering section will prevent that and more departments will follow the suit now."

Referring to the 7th Pay Commission recommendations, Prabhu said, "There is a great burden of Rs 32,000 cr on us. It is an unbearable burden. We have already started reducing expenditures through various measures."
The e-enabled system will be applicable in all 68 divisions of railways.
Minister of State for Railway, Manoj Sinha, said that now the tendering system should also be go digital as it will prevent corruption.