Centre for Railway Information Systems

In 1982, Indian Railways (IR) set up a central organisation to computerise freight operations (COFOIS). In 1986, this was converted into a dedicated autonomous organisation (CRIS), an umbrella organisation for all information technology-related activities on Indian Railways. It was tasked with designing, developing and implementing the Freight Operations Information System (FOIS) and its communications infrastructure. CRIS began functioning in July-1986 as an autonomous organisation headed by an executive director (later renamed managing director).

A unique feature of CRIS is the collaboration among domain experts from Indian Railways, CRIS' own technical specialists, and leading IT companies of the country. Systems managed by CRIS have been recognised by Computerworld. CRIS received the Prime Minister's Awards for Excellence in Public Administration on 21-April-2008.

CRIS held a symposium, "IT Can Happen in Government", in New Delhi on 01-July-2010 after a previous symposium on 06-July-2009. A seminar on big data was held in July-2014, followed by one on smart cities in July-2015, and another on mobility and mobile apps in 2018. CRIS seminars are held annually, with the most-recent one (on Digital Transformation of Large Enterprises) on 01-July-2019.

In December-2019, the Ministry of Railways was considering a proposal to merge CRIS' operations with RailTel Corporation of India Limited (RCIL). However, the proposal has been shelved for the time being.

e-Procurement System provides a secure, fair and transparent method of materials procurement through a web-based interface. It enables suppliers to securely upload their tenders to a central server in encrypted form, which can be decrypted only by authorized railway officials after the tender opening. All timestamps are authenticated by the National Physical Laboratory. The system is operational on all zone railways and units, and has been extended to CORE, RDSO, RailTel and the Calcutta Metro. e-Auction, launched in March-2012, has been adopted by all zone railways and production units. A payment gateway was implemented in January-2012, and about ₹280 crore (₹2.8 billion) in online funds was transferred by February-2014.