By Rajnish Singh

New Delhi, Aug 28 (IANS): Through its in-house mobile app 'Pension Corner', the CISF will, from Friday, be in touch with all its retired personnel to cater to their needs.

With the help of this new digital initiative, pensioners will get connected to the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) units spread across the country, and receive invitations, over SMS, on important occasions in the nearest unit.

Apart from an inbuilt grievance redressal mechanism, all important circulars like job opportunities and benefits pertaining to pensioners can also be accessed using this Android app.

The digital platform undoubtedly not only motivates and increases the self-esteem of such personnel, who devoted their life in guarding the nation's assets even at the remotest location of the country, but will also boost their morale and provide them support at a time when they are needed to be cared for, the CISF said.

The new initiative was launched on Friday under the guidance of CISF Director General Rajesh Ranjan by creating the app to get in touch with the pensioners and to bring them on to the digital platform, which will offer 'a one-stop solution'.

'Pensioners Corner' will be available in both web and Android platforms with the facility for pensioners to access their data on the move, said the CISF -- the over 1.60 lakh strong Central Armed Police Force (CAPF) which is responsible for providing security to almost 60 airports across the country, the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC), various government buildings and many more strategic locations.

In a statement, the CISF said it always considers its retired personnel to be a "cynosure" of the organisation.

To tackle the unforeseen Covid-19 situation and ensure the continuity of the functions in its offices, the CISF had also recently launched web application "e-Karyalay", which digitally replicates traditional file movement.

To handle various security-related concerns and to pace with the existing standards, it has embodied the digital signature feature. This application has been hosted at the CISF cloud having all security arrangements in place to safeguard the data.

Further, a data recovery site has also been established to maintain round the clock services of e-Karyalay.

With CISF establishments spread across the country, the journey to a completely paperless office was not easy but the CISF took up the big challenge of replacing the five-decade-old system prevalent in the force. Movement of files between offices has been replaced by the digital movement of files and delay in file processing has also been reduced as physical presence in the office for this.

It has proven to be a blessing for officers having charge of multiple offices who earlier used to travel from one office to another for signing files. On a national level also, frequent movement of personnel for movement of files, service books and other official documents have been curbed, leading to immense savings in the TA/DA expenditure, a CISF official said on condition of anonymity.

This "Green Initiative" by the CISF has also saved a substantial amount of government money to the tune of almost Rs 1 crore, said the CISF.

It said that the cost of making the requisite app was found on the higher side and involving lengthy time on a market survey, and the "challenge was undertaken by the tech branch of the force headquarters to make the app in-house to save the cost and time. The force has taken e-governance to the last man in the field and has furthered the vision of digital India".