Mobile Seva in India

Mobile Seva Initiative

Making space among the Indian rapidly, mobile has emerged as a delivery channel of different e-governance services in India. Considering the huge penetration of mobile phones in the country especially in the rural areas, it has become imperative to offer Government services over mobile-phones to ensure Government services to citizens reach their doorsteps. Considering this point of view, the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) has announced plans for all its department and agencies to develop and deploy mobile applications to provide all their services through mobile devices. Following are the main measures laid down by DeitY:

1. Web sites of all Government Departments and Agencies shall be made mobile-compliant, using the “One Web” approach.
2. Open standards shall be adopted for mobile applications for ensuring the inter-operability of applications across various operating systems and devices as per the Government Policy on Open Standards for e-Governance.
3. Uniform/ single pre-designated numbers (long and short codes) shall be used for mobile-based services to ensure convenience.
4. All Government Departments and Agencies shall develop and deploy mobile applications for providing all their public services through mobile devices to the extent feasible on the mobile platform. They shall also specify the service levels for such services.

To ensure adoption and implementation of the framework in time bound manner the government has developed  Mobile Service Delivery Gateway (MSDG) that is the core infrastructure for enabling the availability of public services through mobile devices.

Mobile Seva

Mobile Seva provides an integrated platform for delivery of government services to citizen over mobile devices using SMS, USSD, IVRS, CBS, LBS or mobile applications installed on the mobile phones.

Mobile Seva–Today’s Requirement

Looking at the increasing number of mobile subscribers and its reach, it has become imperative to offer Government services over mobile-phones to ensure that the vision of NeGP to provide Government services to every citizen near their doorsteps becomes a reality.

Mobiles itself can be one of the largest Service Access Provider for the government services provided through eGov exchange formed through NSDG (National e-Governance Services Delivery Gateway), SSDG (State e-Governance Services Delivery Gateway) and Domain Gateways (e.g. Passport Gateway, MCA21 Gateway). The current architecture of NSDG/SSDG or the domain gateway should be supplemented with framework for mobile governance.

A separate infrastructure is required as:

• Seamless integration with backend department through existing NSDG/SSDG eGov exchange infrastructure.
• It will provide common interface for mobile based services (SMS (Short Message, Service), USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data), IVRS (Interactive Voice Response System), CBS(Cell Broadcasting Service), LBS(Location Based Services), Mobile Internet through GPRS/3G etc).
• Mobile devices are constrained environment. Needs to generate as well as render the contents for delivering the service on the mobile.

Mobile e-governance Service Delivery Gateway

The MSDG delivers Government services over mobile devices using mobile applications installed on the user's mobile handsets. MSDG provides different set of mobile based services to the backend departments and citizen. As MSDG is developed based on IIP/IIS (Interoperability Interface Protocol / Interoperability Interface Specifications) standards of Government of India, it provides seamless integration with backend department through existing NSDG / SSDG eGov exchange infrastructure. Backend departments will be connected to MSDG for mobile based services.

GOV.IN AppStore

GOV.IN AppStore is a government-owned mobile application hosting platform. It has been created to provide Indian mobile application developers with a hosting platform for their mobile applications developed for the delivery of public services through mobile devices. The GOV.IN AppStore will be based upon service-oriented architecture and cloud-based technologies using open standards as far as practicable. GOV.IN AppStore is India's first indigenously developed AppStore with a very wide reach amongst the people. Central, State and UT Ministries/ Departments are already part of this platform. For more information, visit https://mgov.gov.in/msdp_appstore.jsp .

Source: Mobile Seva- Government of India