The Hindu Business Line : CAG raps Rlys on computerised reservation system

Off track
A number of tickets booked on fictitious details.
Fares and distances incorrectly adopted, leading to incorrect levy of fares.
No structured and documented disaster recovery policy.

New Delhi June 9 The computerised Passenger Reservation System (PRS) of the Indian Railways serving about 5.5 lakh passengers in reserved accommodation every day suffers from several glitches and booking and cancelling of tickets from any of the 4,000 PRS booking windows should be made customer-friendly, a report of the Comptroller and Auditor-General of India (CAG) has said.

In a comprehensive report on the Railways' use of the computerised systems being implemented over all zonal railways, the CAG said the information technology audit of the computerised PRS over 10 zonal railways revealed "several deficiencies".

It said the Railways continued to largely rely on hired BSNL channels, which faced frequent and extensive failures disrupting the PRS services. It said clear milestones or targets were not set out for switchover from the BSNL network to the Railways' Optical Fibre Cable network.

Glaring deficiencies

Stating that sound IT security practices were not followed, with deficiencies both in physical access and logical access controls glaring, the report said the logout procedure was deficient and user privileges, particularly the Supervisory IDs, were allotted without considering the reasonableness of extending the privileges, thus "creating a risk of possible misuse of the powers associated with the privileges".

It said changes in the system warranted by change in/introduction of rules were not carried out in a timely way, leading to inconvenience to the travelling public as well as increasing the risk of loss of revenue to the Railways. "There was no structured and documented disaster recovery policy for PRS over Indian Railways and the preparedness of the Railways to deal with major disruptions of PRS activities was found wanting," it added.

Bogus booking

The CAG found application controls were weak and a number of tickets were booked on fictitious details, indicating a risk of bogus/proxy booking in advance and thereby decreasing the availability of seats to genuine passengers.

It said validation checks for generation of pre-bought tickets for journeys entailing more than one lap were tenuous and accommodation was blocked for dummy passengers using the pre-bought facility.

Fares and distances were incorrectly adopted, leading to incorrect levy of fares. Although allotment of berths was meant to be a zero-error process, various instances were noticed where the system allotted the same berths to different passengers, it said, adding that the internal control mechanism over monitoring of ticket rolls was weak, increasing the risk of misuse of ticket rolls.

Recommending the Railways to beef up its communication network and reduce BSNL links, the report said where BSNL links have to be continued for strategic reasons, effective performance must be ensured through proper pacts and penal clauses. The system design deficiencies need to be set right based on user requirements to obviate manual interventions, it said, adding that the coaching refund system needs to be integrated with PRS.

Strengthening controls

While suggesting adequate access controls to safeguard PRS assets, the report emphasised the need for strengthening access controls to ensure accountability for transactions. Assignment of various privileges should be standardised and adequate controls need to be established to prevent misuse of privileges.

It also urged the Railways to build sufficient checks to prevent reservation on fictitious or incomplete details and to enhance credibility and confidence in the system. Adequate validation of checks should be instituted for generation of pre-bought tickets.

It further suggested that software needs to be rectified to prevent multiple bookings against the same berth. The allotment of berths to passengers should be a zero-error process. It recommended that the internal control mechanism to monitor the supply and custody of unused ticket rolls needed to be reinforced and physical verification of ticket rolls should be conducted periodically to prevent misuse.

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