Suresh Anantpurkar

sanantpurkar@yahoo.com
M# 98453-78462

Mobile Governance - Changing the

Service Delivery Landscape
Introduction
Availability of mobile connectivity and penetration of mobile technology in India has opened
up significant opportunities for businesses and government entities to improve citizen
service delivery.
Financial institutes are using mobile technology to provide timely alerts via SMS or outbound calls to customers of any activity in their account. Similarly most banks have
launched mobile banking application which enables banking on the mobile. Education
institutes are using mobile to keep parents informed of the progress of their child and other
activities in the school.
This transition from manual service delivery to mobile service delivery is significant and
revolutionary one. Another interesting aspect of mobile technology is the ability to help
enable service delivery in the local language (ex. Voice based services, SMS in local
language, Mobile application in local language)

Service Delivery Paradigm Change

Visit to Govt. office

Use of PC / Internet

Use of Mobile

Citizens, Business and Government employees (called CITIZENS) avail the services provided
by the Government but more importantly it is also critical to let citizens know of their rights
and the role of Government in the society. Ma
Manual
nual and IT Enabled services have succeeded
in achieving the objective to a certain extent but Mobile based information and
an service
delivery can bring governance at the fingertips of the CITIZENS.

Mobile Governance Service Categories

The services can be broadly categorized as follows

Information Service (Push & Pull)

Push

Status of birth certificate

Status of marriage certificate

Re-evaluation of mark--sheet

Status of PF withdrawal request

Status of on PAN card, Passport, Birth Certificate, Income Certificate

Notification to Govt. employees upon generation of pay slip

Notification to pensioners upon depositing pension in bank account

Notification to the bidders on the status of the bids they are participating in

Pull
Stakeholders use the mobile device to query for the status of the service they have applied
for

Student / Parent queries the status of the re

re-evaluation of the mark-sheets
mark

Citizen queries the status of the birth / marriage / income certificate by entering the
application id

Bidder queries the status of the bid by entering the unique bid id

Govt. employees checks the leave balance by entering his / her employee
empl
id

Govt. employee checks for the status of leave application

*MSP Managed Service Provider (also known as PPP Vendor)

Payment Service

Payment of utility bills

Payment of taxes

Payment of fines

ervices offered by Government ((i.e. driving license, birth certificate

Payment for services
etc)

Request for a Service

Request for improving road condition in the locality

Request for providing basic amenities in the area

Request to improve garbage collection mechanism with ideas from citizen

Application for issuance of birth certificate

Application to renew driving license

Government Employee requesting for leave to the authorities

Delivery of Service by
y Government Authorities

Inspection of road condition by Government Authorities

Inspection & Reporting of Garbage collection in the city

Inspection of Land / Business Premises for granting certain permissions

Inspection of progress of Rural Housing Development Scheme

*MSDG Mobile Service Delivery Gateway (Mobile Governance Platform)

Potential of Mobile Governance Initiative

Apart from providing convenience of anytime anywhere service delivery, mobile
governance also helps eliminate the need to have intermediaries for information and
service delivery. Each of the above categories of services if implemented
ted effectively can
have significant positive impact on the quality of life and governance.
In order to achieve the objective of anytime anywhere any mobile device service
delivery available to all and more importantly accessible by all
all, a well thought out mobile
governance initiative need to be undertaken.
Due to the diverse nature of our society in which people use various categories of mobile
mo
devices having significantly different usage patterns, language preferences
references and literacy
levels a mobile governance platform to cater to all is that much challenging.
An effective communication strategy in predominantly urban area would include a
downloadable mobile application with various options but the same strategy may not work
in the semi-urban
an and rural areas due to the lack of awareness and willingness to use data
services and the preference towards regional language to communicate.
Another factor which plays an important role in the effective implementation is the
common mobile governance p
platform
latform initiative at the state level. Instead of each

department embarking on the mobile governance initiative of its own, state government
must look at creating a common platform as a shared service for every department to
connect to for providing service to the citizen. A well defined and implemented common /
shared platform can result into significant benefits of scale, technology innovation, time-tomarket and shared learning.
As citizens need to interact with Government at various levels, one of the quickest ways to
popularize and create awareness about mobile governance is to enable citizen centric Push
information and Pull information services.
But, the significant benefits of mobile governance platform can be realized only if Mobile
Payment, Citizen Grievance Redressal and G2G services (i.e. Govt. depts. using mobile
technology to improve the governance) are implemented by the state.
The G2G (Government to Government) services can help bring transparency, accountability
and efficiency in the overall governance provided the implementation is focused on
capturing the data at the point of origin which otherwise was not possible due to the
restrictions imposed by technology and cost.
Whereas, the mobile payment services (self and agent assisted) can help save significant
amount of citizens time.
The Citizen Grievance Redressal system can provide a platform for citizens to voice their
concerns and track it to completion using mobile application.
Mobile Governance initiative can also help Government create a large number of mini
citizen service centers by enabling the local Kirana Shops as trusted agents to provide the
necessary services to the citizens (mobile phone with an application ex. Payment of utility
bills, request for re-evaluation of marksheet, request for certificates where no additional
documentation is required).

Standardization and Framework

Implementation of a common mobile governance platform requires creation of standards
and frameworks. The managed services provider and the IT department of the state
implementing mobile governance need to work together to create

An API standards document for various departments to integrate with the platform
for services

Security Guidelines for departments to follow

Data Privacy to be implemented at the platform level

Guidelines for enabling agent based payment

Payment Reconciliation process document for mobile based payment transactions

G2G Services - Mobile Device Security Implementation guidelines

Service on-boarding and Customer Support process

This is an indicative list; various other uses of the platform like use of the platform for
marketing and communication, use of the platform for promoting innovation etc are not
discussed here.

Conclusion
Though various state governments have started using mobile to interact with citizen, a
comprehensive mobile governance initiative is yet to take place. The benefits a common
mobile governance platform offers are immense but realizing those benefits requires careful
planning as well as buy-in from all the departments from the state.