India’s telecom minister Kapil Sibal on Monday will announce Mobile Seva, the national mobile governance initiative.
The centralized mobile platform is committed to bring public services closer home to all citizens through all mobile based delivery channels including SMS, USSD, IVRS and mobile apps.
The Mobile Seva initiative is expected to enable all state and central government departments and agencies to offer their services through mobile phones. India has more than 700 million mobile phone users.
Indian citizens can avail a range of public services through SMS on 166 and 9223166166 and via mobile apps.
The event to announce mobile seva project will also be attended by state telecom ministers Killi Kruparani and Milind Deora.
The government is launching one more mobile initiative at a time when customers are complaining about poor customer care services offered by several government agencies / companies including telecom service providers such as BSNL and MTNL.
UPDATE
As on date, 833 Central and State Govt. Departments are using Mobile Seva for providing SMS-based services, and over 55.25 Crore SMS notifications have been sent to citizens for various mobile based services.
Citizens can directly interact with Government Departments through SMS. As on date, 254 public services have been made available to the citizens. A Mobile Applications Store (m-App Store) has also been developed by DeitY as part of Mobile Seva, which was unveiled by J Satyanarayana, secretary, Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY), at a function organized at DeitY, Electronics Niketan, Delhi.
The Mobile App store currently hosts over 240 live mobile applications. The live applications can be downloaded and installed free of cost on a mobile phone by any person.
Mobile Seva enables the integration of the mobile platform with the common e-Governance infrastructure consisting of State Data Centers (SDCs), State Wide Area Networks (SWANs), State and National Service Delivery Gateways (SSDGs/NSDG).
It enables a government department to integrate both web and mobile based services seamlessly and enhances the access to electronic services tremendously leveraging the very high penetration of mobile phones, especially in rural areas. Availability of government‐wide shared infrastructure and services enables rapid development and reduced costs for the departments in rolling out mobile based services.
