Driving Food Security

With five zonal offices, 23 regional offices, and over 1,560

depots, Food Corporation of India (FCI) operates through a countrywide network

with the aim of maintaining effective price support mechanism, distribution of

food grains across the country and also maintaining satisfactory level of

operational and buffer stocks of food grains.

Given the objective, it goes without saying that FCI's

contribution in sustaining food security remains vital. And hence, anywhere,

anytime access to food management is what was desired. By deploying Integrated

Information System for Foodgrains Management (IISFM), a web-enabled and

integrated information system at FCI, National Informatics Center sought to

achieve that.

The system mainly focuses on the stock management areas of FCI,

which include receipt, issues, stock, storage, contract, quality control, sales

and movement of food grains and integration of FCI offices. With IISFM, FCI

claims that it has managed to address the problem in a major way. The solution

captures the entry and exit information as it enters each FCI godown along with

the exact means of how it came. It also prepares a report on quantity of grains

present at any godown with just a few clicks.

Ensuring Food Management



FCI followed the manual process previously in conjunction with a UNIX based
solution in its offices. Siraj Hussain, executive director, FCI, points out that

it had many drawbacks and the most important of it was the incomplete or

inaccurate information on the current stock availability. The situation had

reached an embarrassing stage as the Comptroller and Auditor General of India

highlighted the problem and asked FCI to address the issue and provide an

effective solution. This was followed by a decision to upgrade FCI's

infrastructure.

"We collect data from all state offices on offtake, total

stock of wheat, rice and other grains. Earlier, we were getting a report only

once a month, usually around 15th of any given month. The manual report, usually

delayed, gave us details of the preceding month," Hussain says. According

to him, with the convenience of computerization of stock recording, FCI is

getting the reports not only in time but also getting them twice a month on the

current stocks. Besides, data from 166 district offices in the respective states

is captured online by every 3rd and 18th of the month.

"We have been able to achieve standardization in data entry and reporting formats at FCI for all the states" -Ranjna Nagpal, senior technical director, NIC

NIC's senior technical director, Ranjna Nagpal says "We

have been able to achieve standardization in data entry and reporting formats at

FCI for all the states."Unlike the pre-IISFM days when there was a

possibility of manual data for two states being collected in different formats

and consequently presented differently, all information is captured in a

standard format. What this means for FCI is that it has all the information-district-wise,

commodity-wise, crop-year-wise, stocks available, inflow and outflow of grains-for

all states in a format that can talk to each other.

Given the facts of the project, and the way it has come along,

FCI clearly seems to be happy with the progress of the IISFM system. Hussain

says that IISFM has made the system transparent and also minimized mismanagement

of food management.

We are able to take several policy decisions faster and more

efficiently, he points out. "Right from planning the movement by rail,

roads, and other decisions relating to offtake from FCI godowns have become much

easier," Hussain says.

The Road Ahead



Nagpal, who is handling the project, is aware that there is still a lot to be
done before the project gets to an end. "Right now, we are in the third

phase of finishing the hardware supplies to all FCI locations. We have finished

891," she says. This year we target setting up a data center at NIC and

also deploy information collecting software, says Nagpal. At present, NIC's

IISFM systems collect information only from the offices of districts. NIC is

gearing up to roll out information collecting software in the depots as well.

"Right from planning the movement by rail, roads, and other decisions relating to offtake from FCI godowns have become much easier" -Siraj Hussain, executive director, FCI

According to Nagpal, depots are the main source of information.

"We have planned that all depots will be computerized, and connectivity

would be provided, so that grass root level data will just be a click

away," she says.

Presently, the NIC project is not picking up information from

the godowns. Hussain, however, feels that getting real time information from the

godowns will be the ultimate challenge. Connectivity is going to be a real

problem as we penetrate deeper down. However, Hussain points out that talks are

on with various telecom service providers including BSNL, Relaince, Bharti to

ensure connectivity.

Getting in to Godowns will come under the second phase, points

out Hussain, adding that, "The eleventh Five Year Plan will cover

this." The IISFM project being implemented in three phases was started with

the total estimated cost of Rs 97.66 crore in 2003-04.

Assuming the national importance of food management, the project

had complete support coming forward from the Prime Minister Office. Besides,

IISFM was one of the major IT projects, and hopes of sustaining the importance

of the project in the next plan as well are alive!

Urvashi Kaul



urvashik@cybermedia.co.in