Importance of Mobile Government Systems

Importance of winding G all overnment carcasssIntroductionCivilization potty only be consisted of civilized commonwealth, with an organization governing it with all the semi commonplace goods. This organization is k straightwayn as governance. Government in modern long time has to face more challenge than both early(a) organization to execute its tasks and meet the goals. The more technologies be existence discovered, the more citizen involve be created. ICT provides the regimens with the ways of meeting the of all time growing needs of the citizens. In demonstrable countries, Internet Technologies hold up already be fill emerge an easy available utility to the citizens while the rest of the demesne still keeps on hoping for it. The developing and under-developed countries, as an example Bangladesh is legging swell up behind to catch the pace of the ever developing technologies and the benefits which the citizens of developed countries ar enjoying.Basicall y when disposal activities take displace by digital processes over a com siteer ne iirk, usually the meshing mingled with organization and the peniss of public and regulated entities of private sector, indeed it is called e- administration. And m- authorities would be an extension of e- political relation to wandering plat shapes, as well as the strategic use of goods and services of giving medication services and applications which be achievable using the liquid ph matchlesss, laptops, PDAs and former(a) wireless technologies.M-government concept normally helps make public information and government services available whatsoevertime, anywhere (Emmanuel Lallana, 2008) and that the ubiquity of these devices mandates their employment in government functions, only if as an example of the usage of unstable wireless technologies could be the circularizeing of mass alerts to registered citizens via short messaging services (SMS) in typeface of a national emergency.Though m-government is at its early age, it seems to grant a substantial influence on the generation of a set of manifold strategies and tools for e-government efforts and on their roles and functions. It is sooner assimilate later on the studies that the physical body of sight having entrance to lively ph singles, PDA and wireless internet continuatives is increasing rapidly. M-government is already a manifold concept as macrocosm wide awake or patently being capable of having the mobility options is commandly associated with a prescribed, energizing and seemingly all important(p) form of lifestyle and a productive behaviour. The main returns of m-government as an extension of the platform of e-government, would be this drastic change in our dynamic societies as well as tribes mind which is eer influenced by sen sit aroundive technologies and their affect, which alike in a sense announced being energetic all the time as a great feature. In this con schoolbook, the ponder of the variant categories of contribution of m-government in developing countries provides a great grip of insight into how the ICT dirty dog improve their governments yield a good service to the public.Statement of the problemDeveloping countries, such as Bangladesh, are always struggling towards developing the bag of its parley and engine room sector. E-government has been employ in developed countries and is in all sense easily available to their citizens. It needs a lot of power consumption and straitlaced fibre eye nexus to ensure full deployment of the organisation. On the contrary, in Bangladesh the need of electrical energy of 40% more than the total national production, with nearly 70% of the untaught commonwealth watch got non yet exhaust an electricity connection at their homes. Compared to that, nearly unity threesome of the population occupies a prompt remember and this number is increasing every month by an total of 1.5 million quick te lephony users. Hence the current take apart intends to collapse the pros and cons in implementing m-government options in Bangladesh with a feasibleness study done after a complete investigate.Purpose of the StudyInformation and Communication engineering science (ICT) chiffonier be considered as the backbone of modern day civilization. And m-government is one of the brightest assets of wireless ICT, feasible contributions of which could be inevitably numerous. Bangladesh is one of the poorest countries in the world. mickle of that coun exertion suffer from a good number of troubles all twelvemonth round. And the private sector of Bangladesh is non as strong as that of the occidental world. So in topic of any national or tender trouble, the public have to rely al or so solely to government arrangements. The dependance on the government is too high among the people of Bangladesh. As the creator is from Bangladesh himself, there has been an honest purpose of finding a casu alty of deploying an m-government ashes which might come give away as truly beneficial for the general public of the country.Importance of the StudyThe study analyzes the richness of m-government in to long time world and to a fault scrutinizes through the good execution of the mingled aspects f establishing a beneficial m-government system in Bangladesh. It has overly worked on three repre displaceative studies and made an attempt to find out almost the results. The whole overview of the m-government example has come out of this study which might benefit any one who wants to know about the implementation of m-government and its various aspects and impacts.Rationale of the Study in that respect is a vast heart of literature available on the palm of m-government and e-government though there are only a threateningly a(prenominal) noned studies on the feasibility of deploying ICT in all sectors of Bangladesh government.The study proves its rationale by making it an h onest and logical approach to find out the positive impacts and benefits of deploying m-government in Bangladesh. also by analyzing the case studies taken from the practical palm of Bangladesh, the enquiry identifies that m-government would be a lot more efficient than e-government and has a strong likelihood of be coming a success on winning the country a enormous step further ahead from the other developing countries.In this study, it has also been tried to hold a elemental overview of various m-government applications which might easily be assertable to implement in developing countries.Definition of TermsM-government stands for unstable E-government, which are an extension of e-government and a matter of surviveting public sector IT systems geared to interoperability with the citizens mobile devices. vigorous devices are the devices using wireless ICT such as mobile addresss, laptops, in-person digital assistants (PDA) and wireless internet roots.ICT stands for info rmation and communication technologies, which cease be considered as the backbone of modern world information flow.Decentralization is allocating the tasks of a central government to local authorities to govern a gravel area in all aspects.Overview of the StudyThe current research typography intends to observe the emerging trends and the technologies establishing the trends in the field of m-government. The study also collects information on the benefits and challenges involved in the implementation of a full-functioning m-government in Bangladesh. The typography examines various scopes of m-government to become economically and electiveally beneficial for Bangladesh as well as the developing countries basing on the selective information collected for this purpose. In this way, the newsprint finally analyzes the real impact of m-government on the public sector processes in Bangladesh and an attempt of proving this system being a better option earlier than e-government has also been made.Literature ReviewIntroductionIn this study, there would be attempt to see through the potential of various fields of the implementations of m-government. And this research is expiry to ride a number of steps of deeper insight of the nearly promising sector of public judiciary for a wise twenty-first century country. M-government is a very practicallytimes practice sessiond and discussed issue in black marketning local administration and the focus of connecting unvarying public with the administration has never seen such an easier option in order to establish proper nation as well.The review in this section would first try to understand the different functions of government and the long hand of administration to run a country. Thus, the possible integration of ICT in the facilitation of these functions would also be analyze thoroughly with a view of finding the dignified contribution of the system where e-government and m-government are conform toing a vital role. The comparisons and reasoning would always be focused on our main topic, which is the implementation potential of m-government in Bangladesh. Bangladesh is a country representing the third world, with poor infrastructure and low communication facilities. The study intends to face the challenges in such present condition of the country and studies the possible issues of meeting them.Government FunctionsMobile-government is basically the system of running government actions by using the utmost facility of mobile technologies. For this purpose it is not illogical to find out what actually are the basic functions of a government. Mobile technology might be sought into the stream of the various actions of a government. Let us see how below.In a example country, the government is the core wheel-power of the system on which the country runs. The main functions of a elective government could be listed asProviding protection of the citizens and their propertyEnsure the enforcemen t of law at all parts around the countryKeeping in order with the rights and contributions of individually and every citizenConnecting with people, as the people is the maker and decider of the governmentCreate and maintain good foreign relationship focusing the wellbeing of the country, etc.At the end of the first decade of the 21st century, we are now looking forward to the acceptance of democracy in close to every country in this world. Though the list of the duties of a popular country in not exhaustive, the above are quite the uniform for all the independent territories and countries.The facts that we are in the 21st century now upon the boom in the technological sector at the end of the go bad century the contribution of new and innovative technologies in modern government system is inevitable. In this study, it tries to see how various government functions chamberpot get facilitated by fitting in the new technologies that stick out be offered.As it has been experience d in Bangladesh that mobile technology and at a wider prospect, we can e-technology has spread to be in use at a broader surpass in the mercantile sector already yet the government of Bangladesh has not follow the technology that way. Especially when utterance for Bangladesh, connection with the public as being a Peoples Republic has not yet considered as the most important factor so far or the steps to be taken to strengthen this connection. But it is not judge for establishing proper democracy at all.ICT Support Associating Government FunctionsFirst to affirm, Information and Communication engineering science (ICT) is without a doubt the driving factor of the wheel of modern economy, financial, commercial and still administration systems. A system which has not yet adopted this technology lagged a lot behind than its competitors. It is not untrue to say that the invention and innovation of electronic technology has made the world express and easier as well. at that place was an age say about a nose candy years ago, when the only medium of communication was by distributeing earn or conducting wires. For this one had to go to the telegram office or a post office for trying to contact others. Although the postal systems or telegram were quite fast at those days, but after the invention of fit land- telephone or wireless mobile phone or crimson the Internet, who would have fancy that the communication system would grow this faster. The flow of information got so much easier and faster that it has become a matter of seconds now, not days compared to those posting-letter-days.A government is the centre organization of a country. It has the empowerment to rule the country and the power is been given by the citizens of a country. So gratuitous to say that, the government functions are always about the welfare of the public. In order to strengthen this relation between the public and the government, we could not commend anything else other than IC T for its contribution. Towards a process of evolving e-government system for the lift-up in the performance of government systems, ICT plays the core role in its own innovative quality.One of major positive impacts that ICT brings into a government system is transparency in government actions. ICT can reduce corruption of government officials as well, which is a needed issue in improving the government system in Bangladesh, as it has become the top most corrupted country quite a number of times. Technology can automate some processes which could have bare possibility of officials to involve in corruptions. Even the information approach becomes possible easily to public. Government learns can also be planned decent and realistically by the use of ICT. The expenses for a development projects can be monitored infinitely so that there might not be any gaps or illicit misuse which is a major problem currently residing in Bangladesh government projects. Roads, bridges or any othe r infrastructure projects are often stopped halfway through because of the shortage of investment company which was initially passed to be underway with full funding. These sorts of corruptions are a regular incident in Bangladesh, which could see a light on resolution these problems by the innovative use of ICT.And mobile-government system here re-enforces e-government benefits of making the public administration system more transparent, open, accessible and better connected to the public, being supported by ICT.Being Mobile, Being SmarterThe most notable advantage of being Mobile is that it is being mobile. Mobile technologies enable the improvement of communication without a lot of infrastructural development, which might become a pretty much expensive project for most of the countries. This study lead discuss the various projects of m-government taken throughout the world and tries to pay a deep public intuitive feeling about the prospect of those projects if being taken in Bangladesh.So what is m-government and how can it become the new revolution towards a 21st century smart government? This study found after a lot of research that it is not a very difficult question to answer, as the contributions of m-government are pretty much crystal clear all around the world.M-government has often considered for developing e-democracy. E-democracy can be defined by keeping the connection of the government with the public at the first line of consideration. Especially in developing countries where internet facilities are not available enough to genuinely plan for public connection though web technology on its own. Without using mobile technology, the expectation for this would clearly see a failure. It has been a glowing fact that mobile phone users are running a pretty high number in developing countries. So the government could always think about mobile technology as a channel towards the citizens. With enhanced credentials and transparency, mobile systems may see a huge success in this context.M-services under screeningLet us start with various pilot projects and existing systems using the service of mobile technology in different countries. The study would go on with the feasibility of the systems if to be implemented in Bangladesh.This part of the study starts by stepping into chinaware which is one of the most prominent countries in the world. China has seen some projects in order to improve the interaction between the government and the public. Such as, in China people can send text messages to the local member of their respective legislature. The local exemplifications can then be aware of their actions and continuously getting the feedback.This is a great opportunity for the citizens to keep in intuitive feeling with the person they have elected themselves to play on behalf of their local area. Mobile technology here holds a vital role by providing the SMS technology available. If we go for a cross-section of this service, s ay for example upon being elected as a part of an area, the elected person has been given one or more mobile phone number which might be available for keeping communication from the citizens. Whenever there are problems arising or people are suffering in the far rural areas, they can send their plea in a short informative form to the representative via SMS to take urgent steps about the matter. The representative could then be aware fully of this matter and take relevant actions as necessary. There might be a lot of communicational and/or technical gaps or complications needed to be solved, but we could just take this as simple awareness information. At least the representative would know what is going on with the people within the constituency.In Bangladesh, issues related to the matter of clear and firm communication between the local parliament or gist members and the public is not always dealt with adequate importance. The lack of this attitude is not acceptable in a country which has been struggling for over 30 years to establish democracy. It is not going to be babbling about if we say we could establish strong relationship between the public and their representative and reduce the distance between them.Grameen phone is the leading mobile phone company in Bangladesh. Whenever the talk about the mobile phone technology in Bangladesh arises, Grameen phone would definitely appear with its solid base built upon its contribution towards setting up such a wonderful mobile network base in Bangladesh. Right now, about 98% of the population of Bangladesh are under the coverage area of Grameen phone. There has been already over $1.6 schnozion investment just to build and improve the network infrastructure with 10000 base-stations over 5600 locations in the country. And there is still, according to the last envision in 2001, 79% of the population live in rural areas. Also as of September 2006, from an estimate only 38% of the population in Bangladesh have acc ess to electricity. This means that even if the people from a remote rural part of Bangladesh do not have electricity, without which running a computer or a laptop is quite impossible people would still be under the coverage of Grameen mobile network.The introduction of Grameen phone here at this part of the study has a significant meaning. Considering the amount this company has invested developing the mobile telephony network infrastructure and the huge everydayity it gained with over 20 million subscribers, this study keeps a preferable position for this company in mind while discussing about the feasibility of implementing m-government systems and its various applications.Going back to the topic of building and strengthening the communication between the public and their political or social representative, having a strong mobile telephony network like Grameen phone has established in Bangladesh would come really handy for the case of remote rural areas. Even the people from far deep inside the hills and jungles could also be able to not be lost at least by their local representative to the government. flat lets spot a light on what the experts in m-government systems are saying about the various features of this system. There were several(prenominal) seminars during the years of 2002 and 2003 on m-government and expert talks about this system came astray out at light. The experts defined m-government as a combination of two sets of features. There was the launching of the famous 24/24, 7/7 concept by Zalesack (2002) which gives importance on building the freedom of mobile access and services that can be delivered from anywhere at any time. It holds the core meaning of being actually mobile. Roggenkamp (2004) also emphasized mobility device mobility, service mobility and user mobility. every last(predicate) these opinions of the experts support the idea here which is the distinguished advantage of the technology on the move.It is not irrational to menti on that with a mobile phone in a persons pocket means a communication with that person is more or less always possible as long as the mobile phone is in the persons pocket. No other device has made it possible and it holds a lot of significance while considering m-governance system. Any citizen could be connected to government services 24/7 if appropriate systems are there. The government outreach can be expanded unimaginably based upon this fact of mobile telephony system.In between 2002 and 2003, as a part of a Swiss national research project within the framework of COST A14, MIR-CdM-EPFL carried out an evaluation and comparison of e-government projects in six European contexts (Rossel, P Finger, M and Misuraca, G, 2006). Some of them were regional or national, others municipal, especially the cases of Bologna (Italy), Issy-les-Moulineaux (France), Tampere (Finland), Estonia, Ireland and France (Buser, Cotti, Rossel and Finger, 2003). The services which have been implemented were In lssy-les-Moulineaux (France), the possibility to pay parking or reserving a parking slot using a mobile phone, to make a reservation for a local hotel room, to make a reservation for a local hotel room, to make a reservation for books, records, DVD at the media program library or a game in the game library.In Tampere (Finland), the possibility to check availability and make reservations at the local library, to have access to bus schedules and to map service for addresses, road work or any zoning issue, as well to social service information, medical services.In Estonia, the facilitation of payment by internet and SMS.In Estonia and In Ireland, administrative data access, for the citizen, on a 24/24 and 7/7 fanny and national database access, for businesses.These above implementations were not as fruitful as expected after a revisit of the programs. According to the situation in Bangladesh, the possible impact that may be brought by these services being implemented would also co me with a few question marks. Especially speaking of the information being sought after by mobile phones would solicit a strong and secure database at the service end which is not on its best condition in Bangladesh at the moment. But about the context of paying by SMS from a mobile phone is already been implemented in a number of notable projectsGrameen phone has started a service of bill-payment which enables subscribers to pay the utility bills via SMS. The bill amount entrust be only if deducted from the users mobile phone account and going to post-offices or bill payment centres are not necessary now-a-days as it can be done from home simply by a text message.Cell-bazar is some other innovative shopping idea that been introduced also by Grameen Phone. A customer can ask for a list of products in the area of affaire by sending a text message. Upon receiving the list, the subscribers can then bid for the product by sending SMS and the bidding system is not a lot different t han that of eBay instead the bidding is coming via a text message from a mobile phone. A subscriber can also sell by sending short description within the special(a) space of an SMS by sending a text message. When someone wins the bid, gets a text message containing the winning notification and even the customer then pay for the item via SMS as well. The product is then shipped by tralatitious portage though. But a lot of work here has been done simply by using a mobile phone from the rest of the customers phone. close to recently there has been an inauguration by the Prime Minister of Bangladesh of a new university opening project where m-technology has also been implemented. Shahjalal University of Science and Technology (SUST) have announced that student can now book for entryway tests simply via sending SMS. Students will have to send their Higher Secondary award exam results via SMS to the university. The university database will justify the students ability to sit for the exam and will send them their roll-number and the date f the exam, even with a short form of seat-plan. All the students have to do is paying the fees for the exam via SMS which will be deducted from the students mobile phone account and then appear at the exam bringing an attested copy of their photograph along with them. The complicated admission process is been simplified this way only by using m-technology even by sending the student results for their exams via SMS. The hassle of travelling to university to collect the admission forms and then going to the bank to pay the fees and come again to sit for the exams used to take half of the students stamina even before the exams. Now hopefully a student from a rural area compliments to attend the admission test at SUST will not have to sweat to even get a final accommodation number for the test by coming to the city.Thus we could see that mobile-payment systems can be utilized at more widespread areas upon seeing these projects wh ich are coming out to be pretty handy. So on considering the six European contexts, mobile payment rule could be a feed for the thought of implementing m-government system in Bangladesh.Another feature of m-governance that can be put into consideration is getting the public opinion in an easy way. It has been quite a regular practice at the newspapers in Europe. In the UK, popular newspapers regularly put up a poll about several government decisions and actions. People can easily express their clear opinions by sending SMS to the newspapers and they are getting published like broad daylight. Opinions of the citizens are not suppressed yet the government could easily get into peoples minds and be cautious on taking any steps against the will of majority. sometimes it has not been proved handy though. Just to mention the huge dissent in British newspapers along with a huge number of citizens opinion against the singing of British Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary for the re-intr oduction of European Union Constitution which could not be stopped eventually. But the opinions of general British public were being brought out into lights by the newspapers which gave the readers an option to send opinions via SMS.Surprisingly true that the newspapers in Bangladesh has not yet adopted this method of receiving public opinions on various issues and matters related to the country or even their parliamentary procedure. They still rely on letters being sent by the readers. Some of the newspapers do accept telecommunicates but they are very few in number. Keeping the huge number of mobile phone subscribers in consideration, it could become a widely accepted form of expressing citizens thoughts via national newspapers and could have a positive impact on even changing the society a lot more constructively.Mobile technology can also be used innovatively in voting campaigns (Emmanuel C. Lallana, 2008). Mobile-voting has been a regular practice in television programs and n ew product feedbacks to the releasing companies for quite a long time. By connecting a database, SMS votes sent by mobile phones could mayhap turn around the current scene voting reality. In a national election, it can encourage better elector registration and voter turn-out at the poll at the election days. There is a case of this in Spain 2004 election where voter turnout was at the highest rate.1Even in Macedonia, mobile phones been used as election campaign tools when an organization sent two SMS to encourage women to vote for women in the 2006 national elections. And the result came out as an increased 29% of representatives at the parliament of Macedonia are women.21. http//www.iht.com/articles/2004/03/23/a11_16.php2. http//www.newtactics.org/en/node/1685These above facts are a clear extension of the ability of mobile technology of increasing public involvement in government elections. Bangladesh can obviously see the benefits from these projects and the outcomes of them as it is a pop country that sees a national election in every louvre years. A country consisting of population over 100 million and having a voter number of almost 60 million voters, it experiences one of the biggest democratic elections in the world. Following the success of the use of mobile phones in the two countries mentioned above, Bangladesh can also use the same technology for the purposes. Although by taking a huge and almost incredible project for voter registration by providing the voters a National Identity Document (NID) in the year of 2008, Bangladesh showed its positive struggle towards becoming a successful democratic country. The project has gone for almost 18 months with tens of thousands of computer trained personals working hard to complete working for it, which is the first biometric voter registration process in South Asia. The voters data have been stored in a national database and each voter has been given a national ID number. This successful project can help in a lot of ways in the implementation of m-governance and e-governance. Since there is a secure national database now setup already, it should not be a problem to have a citizens mobile phone number added into the database along with the ID number as well. It is a matter of governments responsibility to aware the citizens about the importance of it. Even the Non-government Organizations can also play a big part in helping the government in this matter. The outreach of the government would then be increased at a aim when any useful information could easily be sent to the citizens via SMS technology. Moreover, women in Bangladesh have also been experiencing a second class citizens respect still. Because of the bourgeois nature in the society, most women would not step out of their homes to the canvass for casting their votes. They are not even familiar with a widely accepted nature of women in power though Bangladesh herself has had two egg-producing(prenominal) Prime Ministers in the past and the current Prime Minister is also a female. Steps can be taken following those in Macedonia by sending awareness text messages to women to involve in the democratic process of electing a government with the same rights as men and even empower women of their choice with dignity as a democratic citizen. say-so Problems on the wayProblems that may rise during the implementation of m-government system in Bangladesh are identified belowInfrastructure The government of Bangladesh have to be aware of proper infrastructural development of ICT all around the country. Though mobile phone networks has 98% coverage of the country population, still the service-end infrastructure such as the PC which would send out information to mobile phones and to which the mobile phones will get connected to, should be set up with a secure database protected by a secure server. Right parcel should be installed and a trained manpower is needed.Secure Payment System When considering m-payment as a future most widely accepted version of payment, the government should come up with a series of serious security regulations for online and mobile payment transactions and should put all attempts to enforce these regulations rigorously to gain public confidence in freely use this pleasant system without any mental stress or hassle.No email There could be a new law about mobile phone numbers as there is now about email addresses. That is, the government should ensure that citizens mobile phone number or any information will be kept safe and secure and will not even face risks to go in the hands of third parties.User-friendliness As long as the government keeps the services provided through m-government easily acces