A study of touch screen usage in Bangalore division of Indian railways

Abstract

The role of information technology in effective delivery of public services cannot be underestimated .In the context of Railways effective delivery of transport services includes delivery of accurate and up to date information about the services to passengers. With tremendous increase in passenger traffic volume over the years alongside downsizing of railway staff it has become difficult to cater to the information needs of passengers by the conventional face-to-face enquiry counters. Indian railways have thus increasingly come to rely upon a variety of delivery systems to disseminate train related information to passengers. These include web portals (operated by CRIS and IRCTC providing services like e-ticketing and other train related information), POET (Passenger operated enquiry terminal), Video enquiry, IVRS (Interactive voice response systems) and touch screen kiosks at railway stations. This study focuses on one particular mode of information delivery ie the touch screen kiosks. Twenty nine touch screens are provided at nineteen railway stations of Bangalore division of South Western railway. To gauge the effectiveness of touchscreens, a comparison is made of the performance of touchscreens vis-à-vis manual enquiry counters using primary data collected from manual enquiry counters and secondary data from the touchscreen data base An attempt is also made to find out the demographic profile of users, their preference for other modes of information delivery as well as types of information by using a combination of primary data collected through a person administered questionnaire and online data stored in the touch screen data base. A total of 675 users were surveyed as to their use of touch screen kiosk. As the touchscreens are provided at stations on different routes and spread across three different states the study also examines regional variations in demography and user preferences.