Prabhu advocates complete digitalisation of railways

New Delhi, March 27 (IANS) Advocating major push for complete digitalisation of the Indian Railways, Union Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu on Monday said the move could prove to be a game changer as it would result in saving billions of dollars.

Prabhu said a holistic approach for digitalisation of the Railways in partnership with the IT industry would benefit both the Railways as well as the vendors who partner with it in different spheres.

"We are working on an integrated, comprehensive strategy to leverage information technology for improvements in systems and processes, and to enhance efficiency," Prabhu said at a conference on "Building Digital Railway for Digital India" here.

The conference focused on building a road map for transforming the Indian Railways into a completely digital enterprise.

"It (complete digitalisation) will be a game changer if the Railways can save six billion dollars by investing two billion dollars," Prabhu said.

The minister, however, warned that cyber security should be kept in mind while going for digital platforms.

The Indian Railways One Information and Communication Technology (IR-OneICT) Platform is an initiative to enable Indian Railways to deliver goods and services in tune with the demands by creation of logistics and transport capacity enabled by digital platform.

It aims to use digital technology to better connect the goods and services with the market.

"The better capacity and asset utilisation would mean helping Indian Railways in running more trains, carrying more freight, providing better and reliable services to the passenger, increased revenues and safe operations," a government statement said.