IT For National Importance

Streamlining grain management

Food Corporation of India (FCI) operates through a country-wide network with its corporate office in New Delhi, five zonal offices, 23 regional offices in almost all the state capitals, 166 district offices and over 1,200 depots. The manual process previously followed in conjunction with a traditional file processing solution had many lacunae such as incomplete or inaccurate information on current stock availability. This originated an idea to have a full-fledged computerised MIS that gives the right information and the right time about food grains stock position.

The project involved creation of IT infrastructure in the FCI, networking of various organisations in the food sector, effective monitoring of field functionaries, development of a system for seamless transfer of information between FCI and other agencies.

Developing the right software for the FCI was a real challenge. The system had to be designed to capture the data at the depot level itself. The ICT infrastructure had to be set up at the depot, district, regional, and zonal offices and the headquarters of the Corporation.

An MPLS VPN had to be set up to facilitate the movement of data from FCI district offices upwards. Training needs to be organised for different level users. Technical support professionals had to be positioned for specific periods at FCI locations to provide support.

Process
Integrated Information System for Foodgrains Management (IISFM) evaluated relevant data at all levels of operation and integrated it into a software system. This involved a complete systems study across the country.

The solution integrates both horizontal and vertical activities of FCI and mainly concentrates on the stock management areas like receipt/issues, stock, storage/ contract, quality control, sales and movement of grains. The solution needed depots to be equipped with computers and connectivity so that the grassroots data could be captured. Thus, a web-enabled application on a distributed network was developed.

Impact
The project has led to elimination of duplicity, redundancy and discrepancy of data collection. It has also led to enforced standardisation and coding of items, and better reconciliation procedures. This has led to uniformity and streamlined office procedures across the Food Corporation offices and units by leading to better stock accounting management, integration of depots to head office level procedures for stock assessment in rail transit and has enabled better decision making and planning.