Client Background
The western railway is one of the 17 established zones of Indian railways. It came into existence on 5th November 1951 by the merger of its forerunner, the erstwhile Bombay, Baroda and Central India Railway (BB&CI), with other State Railways viz, Saurashtra, Rajputana, and Jaipur. It is estimated that the Western Railway carries more than 3.5 million passengers per day. Among them, many disabled commuters avail travel a discount through a concession card.
Objective
The primary goal of this project was to digitalize the Indian western railway’s disabled concession card application process.
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Country
India -
Industry
e-governance, Transportation & Logistics -
Solution
Mobility, Cloud, Amazon Cloud Services
Challenges
Indian Railways proposes travel concession to the disabled, which they can redeem by presenting a concession card issued by the railways. Users can get it from the zonal office after document verification. Western railway wanted to digitalize the concession card and eradicate the hassle caused to the applicants. We identified the following challenges in the project:
- The earlier established system required the presence of the applicant at least three times, one during the application, second during the verification and third for collecting concession card
- It was infuriating for the disabled to make three visits and wait longer to get their card
- In case of loss/theft, the process was the same as applying for a new card
- They were using the old method for data maintenance which was needed to be digitalized
- A secure place was needed to store the personal and sensitive data of the disabled applicant
- Maintaining a huge data of disabled customers was tiresome
- There was a need for such a system that could provide a convenient way for the disabled for applying, reapplying or digitally viewing their concession card
Solution
Team KCS conducted a comprehensive study of the client’s current situation considering the project goal to provide a hassle-free experience to the disabled. So, two main considerations emerged out of it. The first was to digitalize the entire system, and the second was to provide a hassle-free card application for the differently-abled. Hence, we divided the solution into two parts digitalization of the process and easy accessibility to the concession card. An intuitive mobile app was the best way out to meet the client’s requirements.
- We divided the entire procedure into three parts processing, approval, and verification
- The applicant can submit an application form through mobile or web app by filling in his/her basic details and uploading the necessary documents
- Admin can see the request and can comment if any detail or document is missing
- Users can see the comment in the notification section and can re-upload the application on the app
- Once the admin finds the details appropriate would forward them to the processor
- The processor would check the application details if correct would provide approval and give a time slot to the user for verification
- The user only needs to visit the office once for verifying the original document like the AADHAR card, disability certificate, etc.
- Once the verifier finds that documents presented are original would share the status report with the admin
- Admin will share the final status with the user
- The user can apply for a lost/damaged card and can also apply for card renewal through the panel
- User doesn’t need to carry a physical copy of card as can view/save & share card through the app
- To ensure the data remains safe and easily accessible from anywhere and anytime we provided cloud computing services to secure public cloud AWS
Project Highlights
Three-step application process
View status of the application
Digital copy of concession card
Hassle-free renewal of concession card
Complete data security
KCS Approach
Understanding the client’s requirement and a huge user base to entertain to we suggested going for a mobile app for application acceptance. The app made it very convenient for users to apply for a concession card. The process which earlier required three visits by the user to get the card was not abbreviated into one. Apart from this, we moved the data into secure public cloud AWS which made it easy for the client to access it from anywhere and anytime.
Outcome
- This ultimately resulted in helping the western railways lower the workload created due to physical application form and manual checking
- Also, only the verifier was the representative from the client’s side that would be communicating with the user directly
- Rest all responsibilities were moved to virtual mode through mobile and web apps
- The biggest beneficiary of this was the user who can now apply easily for a concession card and in case it is lost somewhere can apply for the new one conveniently through the app
- Western Railway found this app very useful that lowered the burden of the task and also eradicated the hassle in card applications alike the legacy system
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Tech Stack
