Government To Complete M-governance App By December 2011

The technology platform, developed by the government to provide citizen services on mobile phones, is scheduled to be complete in December this year, according to the Department of Information Technology (DIT).

"We should have a completely developed mobile service delivery platform by December," said Shankar Aggarwal, additional secretary, DIT, during consultations with stakeholders on m-governance, according to a media report.

IT companies are developing the mobile service delivery gateway in collaboration with the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC). Also, two groups have been formed to sort out conflicting issues among stakeholders. A proposal will be made for the technology development that will be used by DIT for implementation of the services.

The views of some of the industry leaders clash with those of the government on the tariffs that should be charged for delivering m-governance services. While the government representatives, along with some application providers, feel that the services should be provided on a minimal fixed tariff, the telecom service providers feel that the decision should be left with the operators and DIT should not regulate the tariff.

The Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) debated that TRAI should take the final call on the issue and DIT concurred with them, but asked the working group on mobile tariffs to come up with the final proposal.

"We cannot allow service providers to exploit government services in any situation. The committee should work on tariff issue first and then we will approach TRAI," said Aggarwal.

DIT department is holding a meeting with mobile application developers next week and since the deadline kept by them for the platform is December, they will have to bring out a notification on the standards for mobile apps by end of this month.