The ambitious Human Resource Management System (HRMS) rolled out in India Railways and touted as migration to paperless office, has hit a technical roadblock forcing it to switch over again to reliable paper work. Barely a month-and-a-half after its pan-India rollout, Railway Board had to step-in and advise field units to slow down on data uploading. Realising the need for preventing overloading of the main server, the Board has now given a programme wherein each of the unit is allotted a fixed time period for utilising HRMS application. The unfolding story of HRMS has now hit a pause. How long will it take to rectify, no one knows.

 

While data related to around 11-12 lakh in-service employees was digitised, the record of pensioners was integrated into HRMS. The idea was to migrate to the digital era so that hassle-free and contactless delivery of services to employees could be initiated. From the day paper work was ordered to stop, field units started experiencing teething problems, a tale so much regular feature with any new application. Even employees unions had pointed out discrepancies in HRMS application. Their feedback was related to errors in names of employees on physical records with divisions and the one recorded in HRMS. Even a slight change would stall the process leaving employees as well as those on the other side of the window, quite frustrated. More so, the problem accentuated during issuance of travel pass or PTO to employees. Though the Board did take up rectification of digitised records, now server capacity seems to be the latest issue to put question marks on full utility of HRMS. To tide over the problem, the Board has come up with three access groups to get over the technical problems of overloading.

 

The production units, Zones, and other Railways units are in A, B, and C groups, and each of them is assigned a particular day and time period for accessing HRMS. The system engineers think this will ensure hassle-free working of the computer application and ensure faster compliance with requirements. For the field units, it is now imperative to keep its workforce in readiness and complete the allotted task in short time period to prevent mounting backlog of HRMS cases.

 

The advisory from the Board has formed three groups. In Group A, there is a mix of Zones, Production Units as well as Workshops. Group B is exclusively reserved for Zones. Group C again has mixture of Zones, Institutes and Production Units. On the first day of week, the units as per Groups are given a time-frame of 8 am to 11.30 am, 11.30 am to 3.30 pm, and 3.30 pm to 7 pm for carrying out their works using HRMS application. On Tuesday, the usage preference will get reversed and the same formula shall continue for other weekdays, said the advisory from the Board. Since the Board has also mandated processing retirements, calculations of staff, through HRMS it is encountering major difficulties. After the feedback, the Groups were formed and timings reserved to avoid overloading the central server. Also, in issuance of e-Pass, proxy error is common feature giving a tough time to employees and those nominated for HRMS works.