On 29 May, India’s leading software services exporter, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS), got a six-year, Rs.1,100 crore contract to equip India Post with modern technologies and systems. The aim is to help the department deliver not just postal services but also insurance, disburse pensions, accept deposits and collect bills, similar to postal departments in developed countries such as the US, Canada and Germany. Tanmoy Chakrabarty, Vice-President and global head of the Government solutions unit at TCS, has a 70-people team working on integrating the core systems of the India Post modernization programme. In an interview, Chakrabarty spoke about the status of the project and the challenges he faces. Edited excerpts:
What does the
modernization project envisage, and how big is the role of TCS in it?
There are many
parts to this programme. There are different vendors doing various jobs such as
network integration and rural systems integration (RSI). About 35,000 post
offices in the country are single-staffed, hence RSI is very important from a
technology stand point. Then there are financial systems integrators that are
working on the automation of all manual entries, book entries, etc. In
addition, there’s a data centre project which comprises a centralized data
centre and a disaster recovery centre—the first in Mumbai and the other in Mysore
The
modernization programme also envisages a rural ICT (Information and
Communications Technology) platform to deal with the supply of hand-held
terminals for services such as capturing biometrics, accepting postal receipts
and disbursing payments—essentially all mobile postal services. The mail
automation programme consists of barcode readers, automatic sorters and
automated mail-handling equipment in cities such as Kolkata, New
Delhi , Bangalore
Our work
revolves around CSI, or core systems integration. This means that we join all
the dots, and completely digitize the internal workings of the postal
department.
What’s the
status of the project?
We began work
around two months ago. We have around 70 people working on the project
currently. Since the work is very important both to the DoP (Department of
Posts) and to us, we will eventually have around 200 people working to make
this project a success.
The information
technology modernization project, dubbed India Post 2012, is expected to help
the Postal Department achieve a wider reach among the Indian population through
increased customer interaction channels and new lines of business.
The scope of
the project for TCS includes developing and supporting mail, finance and
accounts, human resources, customer interaction management solutions for all
channels including the rural ICT platform, data migration, infrastructure,
service level agreement, call centre and centralized 24x7 service desk operation
for the DoP. It also includes providing security solutions, an enterprise
management system.
We expect to
start testing the integration of core systems in the next 6-8 months. We
believe the system should be ready to go live in 12-14 months.
What challenges
are you facing?
The postal
department is a very traditional organization with well-established manual
practices.
TCS has also
got the mandate for organization change management. This means we have to
conduct workshops to sensitize the staff and ready them for changes that will
be introduced because of modernization.
Apart from
getting revenue, how does TCS stand to benefit?
The CSI project
is about service delivery transformation through a technology-led,
service-oriented approach to offer world-class delivery of postal services to
Indian citizens. This project once again reiterates TCS’s commitment to help
the government deliver citizen services more efficiently. The payment is linked
to service-level performance; hence we have to deliver the goods on time. (TCS’
India
Source :
Livemint.com
