By Arun Jayan - THIRUVANANTHAPURAM
Published: 22nd September 2013 10:16 AM
Last Updated: 22nd September 2013 10:16 AM
With the advent of smartphones in Kerala, the delivery of government services are also getting ‘smart’. From payment of electricity and water bills to remitting University fees and filing of VAT returns, various government service deliveries are slated to go mobile-as the Kerala State IT Mission would soon launch applications based on Mobile Governance in the state.
“We have already invited the Expression of Interest (EoI) from agencies to develop these mobile applications and the project will be ready in another two months,” P Balakiran, director, Kerala State IT Mission, said.
He said that M-Governance services in the state that were till now limited to SMS services would now be extended to mobile applications that would offer various existing online government services in mobile platform.
“As of now, in the first phase, we have identified all services undertaken by Akshaya and Aadhaar to be provided as mobile applications to the citizens. The selected agency should come up with the mobile applications for them,” he said.
Now, around 110 e-SMS accounts have been created and are in use by various government departments for inter-departmental and outward communication through mobile technology.
Balakiran said that mobile applications would be developed on all major platforms such as Android, Windows, IOS etc for offering service of government departments. “M-Governance, initiated by the State Government, was started with the aim to utilise the strengths of mobile penetration in the state using the concept of “always-on” connection for the delivery of government services to common people,” he said.
“The implementation partner shall study the requirement of the project and existing systems.
“They shall support Kerala State IT Mission with technical expertise in development of various components of the Mobile Service Solution, maintaining relationship with telecom operators, operational activities etc which may be required,” the project report said.
The agency is expected to provide new ideas for M-governance, and implement the same in the form of mobile applications capable of working with various mobile technologies.