The lockdown and the efforts of minimising human/physical contact at the workplace have pushed up digital usage at Southern Railway (SR), replacing the manual filing system. e-files at SR offices are up four times in the last few months and the number of digital receipts created has increased by nearly three times.

Before lockdown, the number of e-files generated by SR was 9,964; by the end of July 2020, the number of e-files created by users of SR had increased to 43,557. Also, 1,414 new e-office users were registered during this period.

With usage of digital filing increasing rapidly, SR is on the fast track to adapting paperless office culture to save operational costs and reduce carbon footprint. The National Informatics Centre’s (NIC) e-office platform has helped file work without physical presence in offices, says a press release from SR.

Incidentally, by July 31, the Tiruchchirappalli Division of SR successfully completed 100 per cent digitisation of records and uploaded all the physical documents into an e-office database.

The division was earlier nominated by the Railway Board to standardise the steps and complete the digitisation process, setting the lead for other railway units to follow suit.

Southern Railway has expedited e-office with the support of Rail Tel Limited, which is implementing the NIC’s cloud-enabled e-office suite for Indian Railways in a phased manner.

Currently, there are 1,05,110 users in 106 units of Indian Railways, and as on August 7, a total of 17,68,780 e-receipts and 5,71,665 e-files had been created, the release said.

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