‘We are going to connect all thebattalions across the country,’ says Shailendra Kumar. In conversation with Nayana Singh, Elets News Network (ENN)
Please share with us the mandate of your department in Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF).
Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) deals with the Internal Security of the country. Jammu & Kashmir, North East and LWE (Left Wing Extremism) effected states- our force mainly works in these areas. We look after the law and order situation and also battle insurgency.
I take care of the communication division of CRPF. All kind of communication equipments have been provided to our forces deployed across the country. On the other hand, our entire office networks are well connected with dedicated intranet system. We also use satellite phones for communication purposes, if there are some problems with the regular communication network. Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), has been developed by the Defence Research & Development Organisation (DRDO), which is used by the force when they are on field duty. With the help of the UAV, they try to gauge the situation and plan operations accordingly.
In addition to this, we have been also provided with the big UAVs by the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO). It helps us in getting the live satellite images of the ground situation spread across almost 1000 kms of area.
What kind of IT initiatives are being taken to make operations smoother? Also, tell us about the various new initiatives in the field of IT in your department.
There is an office automation policy in our organisation. Most of data which is available, have been captured since 2001. Almost all our static offices are connected through intranet. Whatever updates we receive from field, we synchronise them with our database regularly. The help of IT is also taken for Business Intelligence (BI). IT initiatives also help us in administration functioning a lot.
We are going to upgrade our systems and are also planning on upgrading the software alongside. We are going to change the platform. Our network will be expanded up to the battalion level and we are going to connect all the battalions across the country.
What kind of challenges are you facing in your operations with regard to IT initiatives implementation?
In my opinion, we faced some problems in the initial years, as people had to change their working style from manual to computers. That was a problem in earlier stages. But now things are changing for better. Computer literacy program in the country has helped change the scenario in the field of IT. We have also trained more than 10000 people and we have set up our own training institutions for imparting IT education.
I must say that the introduction of IT in a force like CRPF has helped a lot in the decision making. The functioning of the Forces has been upgraded by use of IT. Nowadays we are using mobile phones to communicate with our people within the force. A jawan gets to know how much salary he is earning in a month or about his leave status and other such things. All these are all happening with the help of mobile phones only, through the sms mechanism.
Let us all adopt technology for the betterment of operations and performance in the force.
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