Kerala to introduce m-governance initiatives
A week after the Himachal Pradesh government and Cochin-based VAS company Spice Digital introduced mobile governance (m-governance) for its people, another state has followed suit.
The Kerala government has announced its tie up with MobMe, a mobile media and entertainment company, to roll out m-governance initiatives in the state. In the initial eight months, more than 20 projects will be rolled out as pilots.
The Kerala Mobile Governance Project will deliver government to government (G2G) and government to consumer (G2C) services over voice, SMS, GPRS (mobile internet), MMS (multimedia messaging), Bluetooth and 3G platforms. MobMe will be responsible for setting up a service delivery platform on which over 90 government departments will run consumer services such as alerts on exam results, notifications, health related information, weather and agriculture updates and tourism etc. The services will come in two forms – subscriber -ased and pay per use.
Speaking to Telecom Yatra, Sanjay Vijayakumar, chief executive officer, MobMe Wireless Solutions, says, "MobMe is responsible for building the service delivery platform and identification of new services for the project. We are looking at a single service delivery platform with all 14 operators in Kerala. The voice services will also be launched in Malayalam along with English."
He adds, "Since 50 per cent of the user base is on SMS and 100 per cent is on voice, the government is giving a high thrust to voice-based services."
On partnership with more state governments, Vijayakumar says, "We are in the process of tying up with a couple of state governments and we are also working in the National E-Governance Plan."
The G2C services can be availed by the consumer via any handset while the G2G services will be rolled out on one of the three platforms - BlackBerry, Android or Nokia Push Messaging. All the three platforms are being currently tested by the government.
