URT - PRISM (Passenger Railway International Security-based Mobile app)

When the URT project is completed in September this year it will have developed some specifications relating to modern forms of ticketing and fulfilment. There is still work to do to complete these specifications and this will be done in the TAG group, within the UIC Technical Group (TG).
These eventual specifications extend our existing UIC work to include airline-style dematerialised tickets (security in system) and to enhance the barcode specifications used by most railways. They also include messaging required, for example, to share information collected when tickets are read.
Writing specifications in committee is an essential starting point, but deployment and use is needed to make them valuable. Within the URT project, a proposed test and deployment project has been defined to transform the specifications from their current state to something that can be used by IIC members with confidence.
Specifications support commercial and operational business processes. As regards fulfilment, important business concepts include fraud control, after-sales activity, management information and disruption management. These concepts require service descriptions that set out the way that the parties involved in fulfilment and ticket control – ticket vendors, rail service operators, station managers – all work together. A pilot project is needed to develop these service descriptions and test them in real life conditions.
The subject itself is of comparatively low risk, other than the usual difficulties faced by specification development. It builds on existing commercial developments and as it does not require wholesale system replacement, it can lead to a major improvement in customer convenience in a manner that is cost-effective for railways to provide. It will reinforce the role of UIC as supplier of technical specifications to the rail sector.