Two applications namely Advanced Financial and Railway

Expenditure Management System (AFRES) and Pay Roll and

Independent Modules (PRIME) were implemented in Eastern Railway.
Whereas AFRES covers the Financial Management areas like Bill
Passing, Book Keeping, Costing, Fuel, Assets, Cash & Pay, Budget &
Finance, and Inspections etc PRIME deals with Payments, Recoveries,
Leave account, Provident Fund, Pension and other activities of all
Railway employees and also interfaces with AFRES sharing common
database and information exchange. IT governance is the structure of
relationships and processes to direct and control the organization in
order to achieve the organization’s goals by adding value while
balancing risks and returns over IT and its processes. This review deals
with the evaluation of IT governance in Eastern Railway with reference
to implementation of the two applications. IT governance in Eastern
Railway was evaluated with reference to systems acquisition and
implementation of PRIME and AFRES. COBIT (Control Objectives for
Information and Related Technology) – an international framework was
used to evaluate the IT Governance. The IT implementation processes
were evaluated with reference to railway codal provisions with regard to
planning and organization, acquisition, implementation and monitoring
of the systems.
The Indian Railways embarked on a speed work of switching over to IT/ICT
driven administration of functions and have implemented various IT
Applications in the last few years viz. FOIS, PRS, UTS, Control Office
Applications, Crew Management System, Integrated Coaching
Management System, e-Procurement System, Real Time Train Information
System, AIMS and IPAS etc. The Finance & Accounts Department in the
Railways plays an Integral Role in rendering timely advise, proper
maintenance of accounts in terms of earnings and expenditure and
providing in time management information, reporting for decision making
with proper budgeting, keeping the Accounts and compilation thereof at the
end of each financial period, internal checks of all transactions, scrutiny of
investment proposals and MIS Reporting.

Among many IT initiatives of Indian Railways, the Accounting Information

Management System (AIMS) is one of the vital Application that not only
covers the establishment, payroll, leave account, PF, pension and other
vital modules but also facilitates internal checks, bill passing, cheque
printing, monthly and annual account compilation, budget and financial
review and forecast – thus immensely contributes for best of the breed
administrative standards with benchmarked practices.

In an interview with the Editor-in-Chief of RailNews, Ms.Rohita Mishra

IRAS, Sr.EDPM of NR’s Delhi Division says that today almost all the Zonal
Rail systems have adopted AIMS and IPAS and the role of IT has changed
completely now on IR. Ms.Rohita says that the Application has been highly
customized over a period of time and will continue to further betterment.
“AIMS and IPAS are set to immensely reduce the TCO due to economy in
support and licencing costs,” she adds. She asserts that with the industry
scale Security Server Applications running, the complete architecture is
highly secure, scalable and more agile. Here are the excerpts from the
interview with Ms.Rohita Mishra.

Q: Can you give a brief of IPAS Application software being extensively

used by Indian Railways?

Rohita Mishra: IPAS Application software (the software for AIMS) was
developed by CRIS on web based 3-tier centralized architecture using Java
and Oracle. It brings a common Application to all Railways on a centralized
platform so that similar processes are followed across Railways in terms of
accounting practices. A key benefit of such centralization is a faster change
management and integration of effort along with automation of processes.
IPAS application is undergoing a continuous up-gradation to achieve better
efficiency, security and safety. IPAS will provide real time access to
financial transaction data across IR and will also bring financial and fiscal
discipline.

Q: When did you implement the IPAS developed by CRIS, and when it was
actually conceptualized?

Rohita Mishra: AIMS was conceptualized in the year 2010-11 and the
modalities for implementing the project were initiated in the year 2011.
Delhi division pioneered IPAS implementation in June-2015.

Q: Can you brief us technical features of IPAS Application Software?

Rohita Mishra: CRIS is now in the advanced stages of developing the
integrated IT based system for all 3 modules of Accounting. Although core
design of IPAS Application is same as design of PRIME/AFRES, following
improvements are there in the system.

Technology Level:

 Centralized Architecture
 Web based Application. It doesn’t require any client software on end-
users’ PCs.
 Designed and developed using state of the art open Java technology
can run on any OS, any Application Server. Java is futuristic
technology instead of existing Oracle Forms based technology.
 High Availability (24*7) as all the servers has been clustered to run in
fail-over mode. Thus, if there is failure of any server, the load will be
shifted to cluster server immediately and under no circumstances
work will be interrupted. The users would not know the breakdown.
 Centralized maintenance and management of Infrastructure.

Security Level:

 Secured Socket Layer (SSL) software has been enabled to encrypt

the data to keep safe from hackers.
 Role based access to the end users which can be administered by
Administrators nominated at each unit.
 Audit trails to monitor the changes made by any user including
Administrators.
  Credentials of users are stored in encrypted way, which cannot be
decrypted by any algorithm.
 No access of database has been given to anyone for security
reasons. For running adhoc queries, a utility has been provided by
CRIS to extract the data, as per requirement, by writing Oracle SQL
queries.

Database Level:

 PRIME and AFRES databases have been merged into single

database and all the redundant tables have been dropped.

Application Level:

 Inter-related data capturing screens have been merged into single

screen to reduce navigations.
 No Pay Rates form for entry of Basic Pay, DA, HRA and Transport
Allow. While processing of salary, data for Basic Pay, HRA, and
Transport Allowance are fetched from Employees’ Bio-data.
 Steps for salary processing have been merged to reduce the work of
end-users.
 Salary Bill passing screen has enriched functionality in IPAS. The
screen compares allowances/recoveries/allocations with that of
previous month for individual employee to check. In addition,
variations are shown in red color. Moreover, the user has been
provided all the information required for passing the salary bill.

Interface with Other Applications:

  IPAS has integration with Material Management Information System
(MMIS).
 Design of Works Register is compatible with IRPSM (Indian Railways
Projects Sanctions and Management). Once implemented on
Centralized architecture, expenditure as available in Works Register
of IPAS against each work will be reflected in IRPSM. Similarly,
Budget Outlay allotted through IRPSM will be linked to Works
Register.
 Design of Budget Module is compatible with RBCS (Rail Budget
Compilation System) of Budget Directorate. IPAS once implemented
in Centralized architecture, RBCS can be linked with Budget Module
of IPAS for August Review, RE/BE & FM. Similarly, Budget allotted
under Revenue Demands through RBCS will be linked to Budget
Module.
 IPAS is being integrated with Crew Management System (CMS) for
allowances of running staff.

Others:

 As application is based on Centralized Architecture, Real Time

Information of IR level can be provided to Railway Board at all times.
 Being a uniform application similar to any other IR applications (e.g.
PRS, FOIS etc.), all the business rules and report formats are uniform
over IR. Compliance of any rules/circular of Board (such as DA
Arrear, Bonus etc.) can be made speedily.

Q: What are the Functional Modules in IPAS?

Rohita Mishra: There are two types of modules in IPAS

Employee Profile, Payroll, Salary, Allowances & Recoveries

Increments, Income Tax, Bonus, Cash Compensation, DA
A. Payroll Supplementary Bills, Traveling Allowance, Leave, Settlement, Lea
GIS, DCRG, Quarters, Electricity, Cadre (Book of Sanction),
Incentive, Loans & Advances are the working parts of payroll.

Internal Check, Books, PF, NPS, Pension, Cash & Pay, Suspense
B. Accounts
are the working parts of accounts.

Q: Was it fully rolled out on the Zonal Railway as on date?

Rohita Mishra: Key modules of IPAS have been rolled out in all Zones of
Indian Railways. Other modules are in the final stages of implementation.

Q: Have you had a seamless implementation of IPAS Application during

the transformative stages?

Rohita Mishra: Although there were few challenges, yes, the project is
successfully running and few more milestones are in the process of
accomplishment shortly.

Q: Do you have any Service Provider/Agency helped in implementation of

the IPAS and related Systems Integration?

Rohita Mishra: Most of the development part is handled by CRIS. However

the services of few System Integrator are also being availed in certain
areas.
Q: How do you consider the implementation of IPAS has advantaged you in
your day to day functions when compared to previous Application?

Rohita Mishra: Integrated Payroll and Accounting System (IPAS) has

eliminated various hassles of manual working and the system is federated
and is brought into a centralized platform and architecture.

Q: About Data Migration, what major challenge do you foresee while in the
stages of the implementation of the IPAS?

Rohita Mishra: Any project of this gigantic nature may encounter issues like
integration, interoperability, compatibility, structural syncing, configuration
management of information systems and device integration and
compatibility for various systems, while porting multiple data from
conventional systems to single Application Platform which goes to the
fundamental need to do more than move data to information systems, but
to proactively use it in ways that can have immediate results. IR and CRIS
have foreseen such aspects in the initial stages itself, have had taken
precautionary measures and successfully come out of those challenges
which served as the fastest and easiest means to establish a platform that
has the intelligence and awareness.

Q: What major role the Personnel Branch will play in the

implementation/execution and operation of the IPAS?

Rohita Mishra: With over 13.6 Lakh employees, Indian Railways is one of
the largest employer not only in India, but also in the world. The workforce
of IR is a varied mass of people from the Gangman/Khalasi at one end to
Chairman, Railway Board at the Apex level. The task of the personnel
department of Railways is to manage and look after the welfare of this large
mass of employees and their families. Hence IPAS being the centralized
web-based platform met efficiently the requirements of not only Personnel
Branch but the Accounts & Finance Department and eased out the
management of various human resources related matters, from the stages
of induction to superannuation. The major modules includes Recruitment,
Training & Development, Placements, Transfers, Service Record and
Appraisals, Promotions, Court Cases, D&AR matters, Wage and Salary
administrations, Settling Industrial Disputes, Staff Grievances and
Redressal, Incentives and Financial aids, Settlement and Pension,
retirement benefits, employees welfare, Dak and File, Industrial Relations
etc. The project has been developed and implemented at Northern Railway
and is under maintenance.

In Indian Railways, the complexities of Personnel Management arise from

large size of its labour force, the number of categories and trades into
which it is divided and the wide geographical spread of staff. All personnel
functions for staff of Accounts Department are handled by Accounts
Department. Service Records of all Gazetted Officers are maintained by
Accounts Department through Password functions are done by Personal
Branch. All personnel functions for staff of RPF department by RPF
department. All personnel functions of Group-D staff of Civil Engineering
Department are handled by Civil Engineering. However all these comes
under the IPAS now thus removing various hassles of administration and
thus had immensely contributed for better management of personnel
department.
Q: What are the major challenges you have encountered in the
Administration of IPAS and how did you plan to overcome those
challenges?

Rohita Mishra: Employee training, assimilation of course content, trainers

availability, time duration and milestones achievements are few of the
challenges while implementing the IPAS and we could overcome them in a
planned and phased manner over a period of time.

Q: Give a brief on Accounting Information Management System (AIMS)

Rohita Mishra: AIMS has benefited the Finance & Accounts Department of
Indian Railways in a bigger way. The Finance and Accounts Department
plays an Integral Role in rendering timely financial advices, proper
maintenance of accounts of the Railway in terms of earnings and
expenditure and providing in time management information, reporting for
decision making etc with functions categorized as follows:

 Proper Budgeting of earnings and expenditure, pertaining to Rail

operations.
 Keeping the Accounts and compilation thereof at the end of each
financial period according to well established procedures and
formats.
 Internal check of all transactions, both receipts and expenditure.
 Scrutiny of investment proposals
 MIS Reporting.

AIMS has been the catalyst for meeting the above challenges for the
Finance and Accounts Department and the efforts of CRIS and the
Electronic Data Processing wings of Indian Railways spread across all the
Zonal Rail systems are impeccable and noteworthy.

Q: How are the HR and Finance Modules are co-related in fine-tuning the
Application? Which are the areas that were covered under IPAS?

Rohita Mishra: The HR and Finance Modules in the AIMS Software have
helped in a great way for an Integrated Payroll and Accounting System for
IR on Centralized architecture. The Online modern J2EE open technology,
Web based & Browser based, 3-Tier architecture helped us to achieve Real
time information. The centralized maintenance of Application & Change
Management has also greatly helped the department to achieve the
uniform processes / reporting, speedy compliance of rules / circulars etc.
Also, by way of linking AIMS with all other centralized applications viz.PRS,
FOIS, MMIS, CMS, TMS etc has immensely help the Railways to achieve
informed real-time status that which has become a base for Accounting
Reforms. The HR and Finance modules that were catered under AIMS is
as under:

Personnel Department (HR) Finance and Accounts

Employee Profile Payroll, Service Record,

Seniority, Leave, Settlement, Travelling Internal Check, Books, PF, Pension
Allowance, Quarters, Electricity, Cadre, Loans Pay, Suspense, Budget
and Advances
Q: Where is the Centralized Architecture and the Data Centre living
currently for IPAS and AIMS? Do you have any DC-DR kind of
environment?

Rohita Mishra: CRIS is centrally managing the entire Software and

Application.

Q: Do you think that the One-ICT Policy that is being debated in Railways
for implementation has any role in IPAS and AIMS in future? May
please explain.

Rohita Mishra: Obviously. AIMS and IPAS application is one of the catalyst
for One-ICT Policy of Indian Railways that is being formulated currently and
the credit goes to CRIS immensely which is equipped with more than 800
employees – majority being the competent IT Professionals, whose skill
sets in Systems Architecture, System Analysis, Design, Program
Development etc, whose Technical administering skillsets are
complemented by an experienced group of serving and former Railway
Officials with domain knowledge, expertise and systems implementation.
The initiatives of CRIS in various IT space for Railways since last 2
decades is quite larger that is helping to frame a new One ICT Policy.