New Delhi, Jun 19 (IANS): Piles of official files and unnecessary bundles of paperwork are a thing of the past for the paramilitary Border Security Force (BSF) which, courtesy a government initiative, is now using intranet to not only keep a record of salaries, allowances and tax deductions but also monitor the movement and deployment of its 222,000 troopers.

The BSF commissioned the Rs.229 crore Intranet Prahari Project(IPP) on January 5 under the government's e-governance initiative.

"The IPP was sanctioned by the home ministry in February 25, 2010, and is a major benefit as efficient office management is helping in quick decision-making," BSF Public Relations Officer Tirtha Acharya told IANS.

Implemented by NIIT Technologies Ltd, all major processes such as finance, inventory management, operations and personal information have been automated and integrated to act as a robust and quick decision support system and for consolidated view of data by higher echelons and for various analysis, said Acharya.

"The state-of-the-art security apparatus includes the main data centre, a disaster recovery data centre (in a different seismic zone) and mini data centres at frontier headquarters for data storage," said Acharya.

"The most interesting part is that personal information - including salary and allowances, tax deductions, leave record, etc. of the personnel - will be available on the system," said Acharya, adding that the entire accounts system and the movement and deployment of forces will also be monitored under the IPP.

Further, all BSF personnel deployed at 237 locations across India can now access their personal data from wherever they are posted.

Set up on December 1, 1965, the BSF guards the country's frontiers with Pakistan and Bangladesh. It has provided advanced training to around 150 of its officers and subordinate staff to handle the two data centres and 10 mini data centres created under the project.

About 20,000 personnel were also trained on the fundamentals of computers and on the software applications developed under the project.

With this project, BSF directorate general, the sector headquarters, the frontier headquarters and all the 159 battalions are now inter-linked.

The Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) that guards airports and other sensitive installations became the first beneficiary under the government's e-governance initiative in 2007-08 but has still not got the IPP advantages.

"BSF has been getting more facilities through IPP as this scheme has some special benefits... We had approached the home ministry for the IPP scheme but due to some official queries, it is still under process," CISF spokesperson Hemendra Singh told IANS.

According to Singh, without the IPP, the force can only upload data and transfer information through e-mails.

The BSF says there is no security threat to the project because the intranet, unlike the internet, shares information, operational systems and computing services within a specific organisation.

"The whole application is configured only to be accessed through leased lines that are secured by Scientific Analysis Group- approved link encryptors or through a Virtual Private Network (VPN)," Acharya said.