Improving Service Delivery

Through The Use of Digital

Technologies: A Case Study of
Karnataka Mobile One
Abstract
Mobile technology has emerged as a key driver throughout information
technology. The use of mobile technology provides opportunities for
innovation, agility and flexibility in the delivery of government services. It
provides access in areas where the infrastructure required for Internet or
wired phone lines is not a viable option. Such an opportunity has been ably
utilized

by

government

of

Karnataka

in

coming

out

with

both

comprehensive framework on Mobile Governance and its implementation as

unified mobile governance platform. This study endeavors to look at the
normative design of a mobile governance initiative that can work across
countries and also to establish with the help of data on Mobile One how
mobile technology can transform government service delivery.

1. Introduction
Karnataka has been a pioneer in the field of e-governance in India. Its many
projects such as e-procurement, Human Resource Management System,
Bhoomi, commercial tax applications, and setting up of citizens service
centres like BangaloreOne and Nemmadi had Government have made
government services more accessible to a common man. Karnataka has
about 1000 Citizens Service Centers for a population 64 million. The internet
penetration on personal computers and desktops is just 10 percent whereas

the number of mobile subscribers is 55 million in Karnataka1. Therefore, there

is large unmet demand for prompt and efficient delivery of government
services and a need to look for new paradigm in public service delivery
through the use of wireless technology. It is in this background that the
government of Karnataka came out with Unified Mobile Governance Platform
called MobileOne that offers more than 4000 services in various categories
such

as

Government

(G2C,G2B,G2R,G2E),

to

Government

Citizens/Business/Residents/Employees
to

Government

(G2G),

Business

to

Citizens(B2G) and Value Added Services(VAS) of third party. MobileOne is a

step in making government accessible to the masses by diminishing time
and space boundaries.
Figure 1: Drivers of Mobile Governance in Karnataka

Mandate for inclusive governance

High mobile penetration
Increasing availabilty of low cost smart phones
Demand from citizens for effcient service-delivery
mechanisms
High maturity of e-governance and high e-readiness

The purpose of setting up of the mobile service delivery platform is to

provide one-stop shop for enabling the delivery of government services
through mobile devices in an efficient and cost effective manner. The
common platform approach helps in eliminating duplication of efforts
required on the part of various departments for enabling mobile services and
creates policy framework, core infrastructure and commercial model for
departments to just plug and play.
1 Trai Report November 2014
2

A look at the number of yearly transaction on the web-portal of

BangaloreOne shows 48,000 transactions reached only at the end of third
year. MobileOne , on the other hand, reached 50,000 number of transactions
in the first 115 days of its operation.

Legal and Institutional Framework

The very first step the government of Karnataka took to institutionalize the
Mobile Governance Delivery Platform was to take out a Government Order
(GO) wherein use of Unified Mobile Service Delivery Platform has been made
mandatory2 for the department and agencies of government of Karnataka.
This GO provided legal backing to the Platform and made the process of
evangelizing the concept to departments easier. It also helped in providing
an assurance to MSP that all the services of government of Karnataka would
go through its platform only.
Another factor that contributed to the success of the project is the setting up
of dedicated institutions with technical and human resource capacities to
handle the project. A conscious effort was made to ensure a firm institutional
structure to provide professional approach to the project. The fact that
Center for e-Governance, the implementing agency for the project, is a part
of Department of Personnel and Administrative Reform, a key department
directly under the Chief Minister provides gravity to the projects undertaken
by it. Further, the Program Management Unit working under the CeG is
manned with professionals, chosen directly from the market, with relevant IT
and Project Management related skills.
To give power to the project, other institutional structures like Steering
Committee and Executive Committee were formed at start of the project. The
2

Government order No DPAR 10 ACA 2012 dated 11.01.2013.

Steering Committee is headed by the second highest civil servant of the

state and has been instrumental in coxing and cajoling 40 departments to
adopt the Platform for mobile enablement of their services. The Executive
Committee looks after day to day implementation of the project. Further,
provisions are made for regular trainings of the department personnel and
guidelines are laid down for standardization of Application Programming
Interface (API).

Mobile Governance Framework and Features of Mobile One

The Framework for Mobile One is designed to be principle-driven wherein five
basic principles such as Interoperability, Security, Openness, Flexibility and
Scalability inform the functional requirements to create a coherent mobile
governance framework. The architecture provides a long-term mobile service
delivery platform with a decentralized framework, adding modules on
demand through Software as a Service (SaaS) Model.
1. Interoperability

Interoperability is built into the framework by ensuring there is functional

coherence between manual, web, and wireless systems to provide integrated
delivery of services across all the channels. The limitations of each of these
channels are also evaluated to ensure that there is no wrongful commitment
on the request or delivery of services to the citizens and a clear access to
services are provided. Interoperability is further addressed in terms of
a) Network Interoperability is ensured by designing a platform that is both
telecom operator and service technology (GSM, CDMA and PSTN)
agnostic.
b) Handset and User Interface Interoperability makes the platform
accessible across all operating systems like android, windows, apple
etc across all brands of mobiles and users interfaces such as web and
mobile.
4

Figure 2: Architecture of MobileOne

c) Systems Interoperability ensures that the users have integrated and

uniform experience in service access and delivery despite accessing
disparate information and applications of the various departments. The
backend processing of required information/service by connecting to
various departments/agencies is facilitated without the users having to
individually contact different departments for a single service or be
even aware of this inherent complexity.
d) Banking Relationship Interoperability

provides payment solutions

across banks and non banking financial companies seamlessly. The

platform provides choice to the customer to choose from any form of
payment mechanisms that are presently available on mobile.
e) Channel Interoperability makes it possible that a service request made
through one channel like IVR or USSD can be completed through any
other channel of delivery without duplication of request made.

2. Security

A comprehensive framework has been prepared for providing for security of

the mobile platform, applications and transactions taking place on the
platform. The platform is hosted in Karnataka States ISO certified Data
Center.The platform is hosted in Karnataka State Data which is ISO certified
data center. The relevant best practices prevalent in the industry are being
followed and the security audits are carried out at regular intervals. Mobile
Device Management System is integrated with the platform to ensure
security of data captured by using the mobile platform especially for G2G
applications where security and integrity of data is of vital importance.
Government of Karnataka has come out with a white paper on Security and
Privacy required for mobile governance.
3. Openness

The openness of the system is considered on several levels: open platform,

open standards, open interfaces, open specifications and use of open source
technologies wherever possible.open source codes. One of the unique
features of the Platform is that it is an open platform that creates a common
environment for government, private and Value Added Services. It also
envisages

exposing

of

certain

government

Application

Programming

Interface (API) and database to private developers for ushering in

innovations in government service delivery.
4. Flexibility and Scalability

Scalability and flexibility are built into the system from the beginning itself.
The architecture is modular in nature that allows for addition and deletion of
modules on-demand without affecting the overall functionality of the
platform. This approach minimizes complex integration and accelerates
deployment of services on the Platform. The Application Programming
Interface (APIs) has been standardized in order to ensure easy and prompt
on-boarding of services that can be accessed from anywhere in the country.
The departments are provided assistance in on-boarding of their services.
Once APIs are shared by the department, the services are made across
6

channels. Level 1 help desk support along with self service and remote
access facilities are also provided to the departments.

Features of Mobile One

USSD
Unstructured
Supplementary Service Data
(USSD) provides a menu
driven and session based
services that work on all
GSM phones.
IVR
Interactive Voice Responses
is a way to navigate through
information
on
mobile
phones by using voice in
local language.
Mobile web
Browser
based
mobile
application that can be
accessed through internet
connectivity
on
mobile
phones.
Smart Client
It is a mobile application
designed to run on smart
phones and can leverage
features of the phone like

Mobile One has been designed on Platform as a Service

Model (PaaS). A Single Unified Mobile Gateway has been
created to cater to mobile enablement of services of all

Benefits of Unified
Platform

1.

the

Multiple mobile channelsMobile Web, Smart client,

IVR, USSD, Push and Pull

2.

SMS
Multiple payment modesNet-banking,

IMPS,

Credit/Debit
3.

wallets
Unified

card,

user

Telco

experience

with provision of directory

of services for easy service
4.

discovery
Services available in both

5.

Kannada and English

Services accessible across
all handset and telecom

6.

operators
Departments are provided
with

7.

ability

to

go

for

targeted advertising
Integrated with PayGov
(Government

of

Payment

Indias
Gateway)

providing lowest payment

8.

and

agencies

of

government

of

Karnataka. It is modular in architecture and follows multichannel and inclusive approach for maximum adoption,
wherein services of departments are made available
across all the mobile channels like Interactive Voice
Recording (IVR), Unstructured Supplementary Service
Data (USSD), Short Text Messaging (SMS), mobile web
and mobile applications. The mobile application is also
available on Google Play Store and Apple Apps Store. A
single number 161 can be dialed for IVR, USSD and pull
SMS to access the services from anywhere in India and
also to download the application. Since the services are
available across channels anyone who has a phone, be it
a basic phone with just voice, SMS and USSD facility or a
smart phone with 3G capabilities, can access MobileOne
services on his mobile phone. This unified vision of

gateway

charges

to

mobile governance has eliminated the need for residents

citizens
Brings in

economies

of

to remember multiple short codes, numbers, multiple

scale
9.

departments

by

aggregating

demand
No operational overheads
for the Departments as the
project

is managed by

specialized

government

agency set up for such

purpose
10. Centrally management of
Service Level Agreements
(SLA) to ensure Quality of
Services.
11. Best
practices
various

across

departments

are

mobile applications and mobile-web addresses to access

Government services. All the services of the Government
of Karnataka are available on easy to remember one
number/address across channels. It is in this way Mobile
One provides interoperability across channels and helps
in bridging the digital divide.
Further, the Platform is geared to provide all kind of
services on mobile like Push, Pull, Payment and Data
Capture services. A push service is simple sending of
information on the mobile phones of the citizens like
8

disaster alerts, weather information or commodity pricing to the farmer,

traffic alerts or status of the application.
Figure 3: Push Service

Pull services on the other hand enable citizens to access services from an
interactive interface like IVR, USSD, mobile web and mobile application. A
few examples of such services are finding out the guidance value of land or
property in a particular area, finding out about the income refund status or
checking the train PNR status.
Figure 4: Pull Service

Payment services allow payments to be made for delivery of any public or

private services like utility bill payments. The Platform has the ability to
integrate with all the available mobile payment modes and at present credit
and debit cards, National Payment Corporations IMPS and telecom
operators wallets have been enabled on the Platform. Payment of utility
bills, income tax, property tax, examination fees, traffic fines etc are a few
examples of payment services.

Figure 5: Payment Service

Data Capture by government refers to use of an application on the mobile to

gather both data and deliver services like health workers can use mobile
applications for antenatal and postnatal services. Data capture by citizen
include examples such as filling application for passport, application for
LL/DL, Application for scholarship etc
Figure 6: Data Capture Service

Apart from these services, Value Added Services (VAS) of third parties is also
provided on the Platform. MobileOne, in a very short time, has emerged as a
10

largest aggregator of both government and private services on mobile

platform

Public Private Partnership and Business Model

The platform is developed on public-private partnership model with IMI
Mobile with no initial cost to government of Karnataka. The Private Partner is
responsible for the design, deployment & management of the platform along
with upgrades, evolution, dimensioning, capacity planning, integration,
telecom

service

provider

relationship

management,

security

and

authentication aspects that are critical for the efficient performance of the
platform from the technology perspective. Karnataka government, on its
part, provides MSP with secure space in its state data center and brings in
services from the departments for mobile enablement.
A unique business model has been developed for the project that lays
emphasis on mobile enablement and usage of services. The Managed
Service Provider (MSP) is paid on the basis of number of new services that
have been enabled on the Platform in a month. The services have been
divided in terms of complexity involved in on-boarding them on the Patform
into Pull, Push, Payment and Data Capture categories and for each category
of services, the MSP had given his financial quote for enablement . Service
enablement is a onetime payment made to the MSP on the successful
enablement of services across all the mobile channels. The MSP also gets
paid for the actual usage of channels as per the slabs for both SMS (number
of SMS sent) and IVR (number of PRI lines used). In order to ensure that the
services are well maintained on the Platform, the RFP further, stipulates that
the MSP shall be paid 15 percent of the average service enablement cost
after completion of first year , as the annual maintenance cost(AMC) for the
services that are live and working. In case of Value Added Services of the
private party, a Transaction Based Business Model has been built into the
RFP, wherein based on the number of transactions, the proceeds from the
11

services are divided between the service provider, MSP and government of
Karnataka. This hybrid business model provides flexibility and sustainability
to the project at the same time appropriately hedges the risk of failure for
both government and MSP. On the part of government, there is no initial
investment that is required to be made for the project and also payments
made to the MSP are based on actual service enablement and usage of
channel. As for MSP there is immense commercial opportunity in the project
in terms of volumes and third party applications. All the payments are made
to the MSP after taking into consideration compliances with Service Level
Agreements (SLAs) that lay emphasis on provision of uninterrupted quality of
services (QoS) to the citizens.

Proof of Concept and learning

A proof of concept (PoC) was conducted before the preparation of the
Request for Proposal (RFP) to test the workability of multimodal unified
mobile governance platform. Though the proof of concept was a short one
due to impending state elections, it provided lots of learning points that were
later incorporated in the RFP. The PoC involved 5 payment services and 2
pull information services. Telcos like Tata Teleservices, Idea and BSNL
participated in the PoC by providing both IVR and USSD numbers. For
payment services only credit card was opened up for mobile payments. The
PoC was formally inaugurated by the Chief Minister on January 10, 2013 but
no advertising or follow-up publicity measures could be undertaken because
of the announcement of assembly elections in the state. The details of
transactions are given below:
Services

Attempts

BESCOM bill payment

Cell One bill payment
Traffic Violations fine
SAKALA Status check

187
50
121
45

Completed
Transactions
35
10
12
45
12

The PoC helped in understanding all the dependencies involved in

implementing the project especially related with departments, telcos, Banks
and MSP and brought to fore following areas that required remedial actions in
both RFP preparation and eventual implementation:
I.

While integrating the services on the platform, the first problem faced
was the existence of disparate applications and databases of the
departments and lack of standardized Application Programming
Interface (APIs) for integration with the mobile platform. This led to
time-consuming process of writing and customizing the integration
process. It is because of this learning that CeG came out with a white

II.

paper on standardization of APIs for integration purposes.

Another problem faced was the difficulty in getting USSD opened up
from the Telcos. It was realized that because of lack of both aggregator
and business model for USSD usage, it was best to go into direct
relation with the Telcos for USSD with the help of Ministry of Telecom,
Government of India. Thereafter, with the help of Ministry of Telecom,
uniform access number across channels (USSD, IVR and pull SMS) and
telcos was procured by the state government itself and the integration

III.

part was left with the MSP.

The opportunities and limitations involved with each channel also
came

to

fore

and

accordingly

an

appropriate

strategy

of

complementing and supplementing the channels was put in place in

IV.

the RFP.
The use of credit card as the only mode of payment in the PoC limited
its scope. In the actual implementation all the available mobile
payments modes were sought to be integrated in order to widen the
reach of the project. It was also realized to go for the correspondent
model, in the rural areas, for payment services to provide real benefit
to the underserved areas.

13

V.

Need for education of customers and evangelizing of concept

especially when it comes to payment services was realized and
therefore

in

the

detailed

budget

proposal

for

implementation,

considerable part of the budget was earmarked for awareness building

VI.

and advertising.
The provision for price discovery for G2G was also made in the RFP
after realizing that there is large demand for such services from the
departments. A price discovery in the RFP will ensure timely

VII.

preparation and deployment of a G2G application.

Further, it was realized during the PoC that all the push services of a
department can be bundled under one API and considered as a case of

VIII.

single on-boarding of a push service.

Also, the realization that alphanumeric reference numbers used in
certain applications like SAKALA were not amenable to mobile
enablement on IVR channel, led to the guidelines to use only numeric
reference numbers while building any application. Subsequent to the
PoC, SAKALA reference numbers were made numeric.

Present Status of Mobile One

The Mobile Platform was inaugurated on 8 th December 2014 by the President
of India. Within three months of its launch, MobileOne has managed to get
overwhelming

response

from

the

government

departments

and

VAS

providers. At present there are 4300 services available on the platform out of
which 658 are government services of 40 departments. A few prominent
services include government services like payment of utility bill payments,
income and property tax payment, SAKALA services, bus and railway ticket
bookings, applications for various government services and value added
services in the categories of healthcare, banking, travel, legal, agriculture
and other areas. It is noticed that government services drive volumes as VAS
are either unknown or cater to certain niche areas that have low volume. A

14

break-up of government services into pull, push, payment and data capture
is given below.

Type of Service

Number of Services

Government to Citizens

637

Government to Business

Government to Employee

Government to Government

10

A unique achievement of Mobile One is the predominant nature of Pull,

Payment and Data Capture services. Many of the earlier mobile governance
initiatives have been limited to just sending push SMS to the citizens with no
facility for the citizens to access information at their end. In MobileOne,
however, the focus is to make maximum services available to citizens on
their mobile phones without them having to visit government office or citizen
service center. The following graph shows the division of government
services available on the platform into pull, push, payment and data-capture.
Figure 7: Categorization of Services

Number of Services
41

26 42

Pull
Push
Payment
549

Data Capture

15

A study of number of visitors on MobileOne

An analysis of total number of visitors till the end of March shows about 7.5
million hits on the platform out of which around 1.7 million are the unique
subscribers. The ratio of repeat visits and unique users is much higher in
case of Smart client application compared to any other channel because of
rich user interface and ease in navigating the pages. Even though smart
client has the highest number of hits, it is IVR followed by USSD that have
the higher proportion of unique users. This phenomenon may be attributed
to both of ease of dialing a single number for accessing services and limited
number of mobile internet/smart phone users in the country. Pull SMS, on
the other hand, has the least usage and unique user base mainly because of
complex syntaxes that are required to be entered for availing of any
services. Further, it is interesting to note that though the Mobile Web and
Smart Client have exactly same look and feel and mobile web is available
across operating system against smart client availability only on android and
ios interfaces, it is smart client that has attracted more number of users. The
reason could be that Smart Client application once downloaded resides on
the device and does not require remembering any URL and is faster because
of its ability to maintain cache of first few pages.

16

Figure 8:Cumulative Number of Visits

4,500,000
4,000,000
3,500,000
3,000,000
2,500,000

Hits

2,000,000

Unique users

1,500,000
1,000,000
500,000
Smart App

IVR

USSD

WAP

Pull SMS

Transaction Volume Analysis Pull Services

Figure 9: Volume of Top Ten Pull services

Pull Transaction Volume

80000
70000
60000
50000
40000
30000
20000
10000
0

71382
36593
28095
20951
1413613227

Pull Transaction Volume

8245 5598
3110 2257

Transaction Volume Analysis Top 10 Payment Services

17

Payment Transaction Volume

25000

20932

20000
15000
10000

Payment Transaction Volume

6411
3894

5000

570 495 484 231 130 77

0
BESCOM

BWSSB

HESCOM

IRCTC

60

BBMP

Transaction Volume Analysis Top 10 VAS

30000

26721

25000
20000
15000
10000
5000

3334

3276

2217

718

672

523

523

273

100

Rural Vs Urban Services

18

Stakeholders Participation
MobileOne is still in the nascent stage and it would be too early to discuss
factors that may lead to its success or failure. Instead we would take up
factors that contributed to creation of both a robust mobile governance
framework

and

its

successful

initial

implementation.

Stakeholders

participation in the project, right from the inception stage, helped the project
in

finding

firm

moorings

in

the

politico-socio-economic-technological

landscape prevailing in the state. In order to ascertain technological

solutions available in the market, a meeting was organized with major mobile
technology solution providers. Each Company was asked to make a presentation
on
Figure 10: Stakeholders involved in MobileOne

the technological solution, public-private partnership and business model.

Based on the understanding gained from these presentations, the contours
of technological solution and public-private partnership were fixed. Similarly,
departments were involved in both planning and implementation of the
project. At the time of clearance of the project from the cabinet, a few major
19

departments were asked to give both their opinion on the project and
commitment in terms of number of services they will host on the mobile
platform at the start of the project. It is this commitment on the part of the
departments that provided big fillip to the project. Telcos were also taken onboard from the time of the PoC itself. Not only they provided prompt
integration access, their wallets were also included as the mode of payment
on the platform. Department of Telecom, Government of India and Telecom
Regulatory Authority of India helped in providing uniform number across
channels and telcos and Reserve Bank of India helped in streamlining the
mobile payment landscape in the country. Instant Mobile Payment System
(IMPS) of National Payment Corporation of India was also made part of the
project from the beginning itself and a demonstration on their payment
technology was given a platform in the PoC.

VAS providers were also

involved in the project by sharing with them a white paper on provision of

Value Added services on MobileOne and taking their opinion on the
framework. The mobile governance framework created win-win situation for
both implementing agency i.e. CeG and VAS providers on one hand these
services provide revenue opportunities for government to make the project
self-sustainable on the other hand VAS providers get access to all the
channels and a common platform for launching their services without having
to deal with individual telcos. Further, the monetization opportunity
presented by MobileOne helps them to reduce their dependencies on the
telcos and get larger revenue share.

20

A healthy relationship with the MSP is vital for the success of the project. It is
for this reason that the Master Service Agreement (MSA) was made part of
the RFP to elicit comments and to lay down acceptable ground rules. The
roles and responsibilities of the implementing agency, departments and MSP
are very clearly defined in the RFP. The business model is designed in such a
manner that there is an incentive for the MSP to put in its
best efforts in the project.
A few interesting
applications on MobileOne

It

Nano Ganesh

conceptualized during the time of BJP government and

Mpower

was

Icare

government in the state. The initial approval to the

Redbus

project, the government order mandating the use of the

iCare which allows responsible citizens

to report civic, safety and other issues to
relevant departments including BBMP,
RTO and Police.
Another service called mPower allows
citizens to alert pre-configured contacts
in case of an emergency. When
activated, text messages are sent with
location coordinates and a loud alarm
triggered on the device.

practo

is

interesting
implemented

to

note
when

that

the

Congress

project
formed

was
the

platform by departments, conduct of the PoC and

publishing of the RFP were done during BJP regime. The
award of tender, cabinet approval to the final plan and
actual implementation took place in Congress regime. In
both instances there was full support of the political
executive as it is in their electoral interest to show
themselves as working for improving the efficiency of
service delivery and bringing government closer to the
people. In fact congress used this initiative to showcase
that Karnataka could implement what Prime Minister Shri
Narender Modi was still talking about -of using mobile
technology to transform service delivery.

Intellectual Property Rights

MobileOne was conceptualized as a Mobile Service Delivery Gateway on
Platform as a Service Model. It essentially serves as a conduit for both
departments and citizens for delivery of services on mobile. To the
departments, the platform provides the readymade infrastructure and access
21

to all the mobile channels of delivery with no overhead costs. To the citizens,
the unified approach of providing all the services under one number and URL
simplifies the process of discovery and access to services. The platform
essentially acts as a middleware and the applications and data continue to
reside with the departments. The ownership of applications and data created
thereof, vests with the departments. In this way MobileOne initiative is very
different from the other e-governance initiatives like e-procurement that are
created to electronically enable a business process that was earlier available
manually and require lots of customization and need to have intellectual
rights over the solution. A commercial-off-the-shelf (cots) solution in
MobileOne helps in keeping the costs low and provides flexibility to switch to
a new solution whenever the circumstances and technological obsolesce so
demand. Also, it ensures a speedy deployment and launch of services. The
lack of proprietary rights over the platform does not in any way limit the
replicability aspect of MobileOne as it is designed to host applications of both
government and private parties. At present the platform has applications of
both government of Karnataka as well as that of central government.

Replicability of the MobileOne model and Policy Implications

e-Governance Framework of government of Karnataka and MobileOne

The MobileOne initiative of government of Karnataka, like the other egovernance initiatives in the state, follows the basic six principles of egovernance.

Strong

institutional

and

legal

framework

provides

solid

foundation to the project. By mandating the use of MobileOne for mobile

enablement of services, the framework ensures maximum minimum level of
adoption of the project. Creation and leveraging the common infrastructure
for the use of all the departments and agencies of the state brings in
economies of scale and makes the project viable. Going in for Public-Private
22

Partnership with independent project management structure designed to

specifically manage the challenges relating to technology, policies, process
and human resource management largely insulate the project from political
risks associated with the project. Innovation in use of mobile technology and
business process re-engineering incorporated therein allows for leapfrogging
limitations of lack of digitized data in cases where either no legacy data is
required or data can be created as one goes ahead. Institutionalized training
helps in capacity building of the government personnel to bring them in the
forefront of cutting edge technology.
Potential for Replicability

MobileOne provides a comprehensive framework for mobile governance to

take off in the state of Karnataka and beyond. It covers entire range of
technological solutions available in the market for service delivery- SMS,
USSD, IVR, mobile web and smart client. Being modular in architecture, it has
provision to add more channels in the future such as NFC, Smart TV etc. This
feature provides for future-proofing against technology obsolescence. The
unified approach ensures ease of access to the citizens and aas well as a
well established space for service discovery. Citizens need not remember
multiple

numbers

and

syntaxes

to

access

services

as

at

one

number/URL/smart client download they can find all the government and
value added services. This unified approach in service delivery is the USP of
Mobile One and makes it stand apart from all the mobile governance
initiatives taken so far not only in India but world over. A few countries like
South Korea, Singapore and Estonia do provide a majority of government
services on mobile phones but their strategy is smart phone oriented. In
emerging countries, like India, where the penetration of smart phone is
limited, smart phone oriented strategy will not work. Though India ranks
third among the top countries for smart phone users with an estimated 117
million subscribers, behind only China and the US but the penetration of
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smart phones as a percentage of mobile users in India is pegged at just 10

per cent, the lowest among the top 30 smart phone markets 3. This calls for a
strategy that is unified at the same time multi-channel oriented to cater to
all kind of devices available in the market. MobileOne framework can be
easily replicated in all the emerging nations with similar mobile subscriber
base. Even in developed nations like US, the smart phone penetration is
around 62 percent and has scope for adoption of multi-channel but unified
approach for delivery of public services on mobiles. Therefore, the biggest
strength of MobileOne is that it is not just amalgamation of a few delivery
channels or applications; it is much more than the sum of its part and has
provided the strategic pathway for doing government business through
mobiles.

Way Ahead
MobileOne is a first of its kind project in the world that has come out with
both a comprehensive framework on mobile governance and a unified
approach in service delivery. Presently there are 4300 services available on
the platform that makes it a largest mobile platform in the world. But the
project is still taking shape and there is much ground left to be covered.
First of all, the study of services and user base shows it to be essentially
urban centric. In order to derive full benefits of mobile technology for
government service delivery, it is of utmost importance that MobileOne
reaches the remotest part of the state especially the rural areas. If lack of
payment instruments available in the rural area is a hindrance then a
mediated service model wherein either a local government servant like a
postman or a neighborhood shop-owner can mediate for payment services.

3 according to the latest Internet trends 2014 report by Mary Meeker,

partner at the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB)
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Evangelizing the concept of delivery of services on mobile requires more

concerted efforts on the part of implementing agency. Apart from a few
promotional activities that were undertaken at the time of launch, no other
promotional and client-educational activities have been undertaken. Since
the project is new, it requires intensive promotional activities both in urban
and rural areas, to both popularize the services available on the mobile and
to establish the brand name.
The RFP talks about setting up of an innovation center to fill the gap between
what is desired by citizens and what is provided to them by the government.
The purpose of the innovation centre is to give fillip to innovations in the
area of service delivery on mobiles by showcasing best practices available in
both government and private space, by exposing certain APIs and databases
to public for application development purposes, by providing space for such
applications on the Platform, by rewarding innovations and by providing
funding for such endeavors.

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