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Digital Inclusion, E-Government

DIT inches closer to m-governance

By Anshupriya Jha | 13 July 2011

At the consultation round held by the government on July 12, 2011, with all interested external stakeholders on Mobile Governance Policy Framework, the Centre’s Department of Information Technology set December as the deadline for completing the development of a platform to facilitate mobile governance schemes in the country.

The meet began with a power point presentation by Dr. Rajendra Kumar, Director, National e-Governance Division (NeGD), DIT on the framework guidelines decide upon by the government. The floor was then thrown open to suggestions, questions and discussions.

Shankar Aggarwal, Additional Secretary, DIT, was also present. Apart from a few other DIT officials, Mobile Network Operators (MNOs), Value Added Service (VAS) providers, journalists and a few citizens also participated in the discussion.

Suggestions from all quarters were noted down and the officials promised to deliberate upon the same when finalising the policy.

The issue of pricing the delivery of such services saw contradicting views from various quarters. While the telecom service providers wanted it to be left open to the market forces, government representatives and some others wanted a minimum tariff to be fixed. The MNOs said since there were a number of players in the market, the demand and supply, and the quality of services would be mixed and matched to reach an acceptable fare. According to the Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) representative, the tariff-related issues should be referred to Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), the country’s telecom regulator. Others, however, were of the view that DIT needs to regulate the same as a high pricing may prevent rural citizens from availing themselves of these services.

Mr. Aggarwal formed two groups of different stakeholders with a common government interface to discuss among themselves and come up with suggestions for consideration by the DIT. While Mr. Aggarwal agreed to the idea of going to TRAI, he insisted that the groups reach a workable model.

The m-governance initiatives would primarily be aimed at the rural population which doesn’t have access to e-governance schemes due penetration of Internet and Broadband. However, the government wants to leverage the huge and growing base of mobile phones (771 million mobile phone subscribers in the country as on 31 January, 2011) to reach out to the masses for better delivery of government-to-citizen services.

A draft policy published by the DIT earlier this year had sought recommendations on ensuring the most efficient use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for better governance and inclusive development.

The government aims to make public services available to all residents through a mobile platform that is available 24*7 on an anytime, anywhere basis. For this, the government would make all government web sites mobile compliant and create a Mobile Service Delivery Gateway (MSDG), to be developed by IT companies in collaboration with the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC).

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