Mobile Seva is an innovative initiative aimed at mainstreaming mobile governance (m-Governance) in the country. It aims to leverage wireless and new media technology platforms, mobile devices and applications for delivery of public information and services to all citizens and businesses. It aims at widening the reach of, and access to, public services to all citizens in the country, especially in the rural areas by utilizing the much greater penetration of mobile phones in the country. It also leverages the innovative potential of mobile applications in providing public services. The overall strategy aims at making India a world leader in harnessing the potential of mobile governance for inclusive development. Mobile Seva provides a complete ecosystem for enabling the delivery of various electronic government services through mobile devices in an efficient manner with minimum effort for the participating Government departments and agencies. Mobile Seva will also help in enhancing the interoperability of mobile-based services among various Government departments and drastically reduce the cost and time for development and deployment of applications for m-governance services.
Mobile Seva provides all possible mobile based channels for service delivery, e.g., SMS, USSD, IVRS and mobile applications. It will also provide location based services (LBS) and cell broadcasting services (CBS). It provides integrated hardware and software to test and deploy the m-governance applications. It provides various mobile based options for the citizens to apply for and receive public services through their mobile devices irrespective of the network operators to whom they've subscribed. It also has an integrated system for delivering the IVR based services through mobiles and fixed telephones. Mobile Seva supports the delivery of both voice and data services and content in a network and device independent manner to the extent possible and feasible. It also offers shared tools like data collection, helpdesk services, APIs and SDKs to the Government departments and agencies that wish to deploy mobile applications for public services. It also has a provision for metered access so that various agencies and partners of Mobile Seva can account for any fee based services based upon their actual delivery.
Mobile Seva is owned by the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY), Government of India. The technical implementation of Mobile Seva is being done by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), a DeitY organisation.
Mobile Seva has a provision for metered access so that various agencies and partners of Mobile Seva can account for the fee-based services based upon their actual delivery.
Yes, Mobile Seva provides a fully operational mobile payment gateway. As many transactional government services involve some amount of payments to be made by the service seekers to the Government departments, a Mobile Payment Gateway has been developed incorporating various channels for making electronic payments through mobile devices. These include credit/debit/cash/prepaid cards, SMS based payments through Mobile Money Identifier (MMID), mobile wallets, net banking, etc. The Mobile Payment Gateway has been made available to Government departments and agencies for integration with their applications. Citizens and businesses can use this facility to make payments for various government services through their mobile devices.
The responsibility for service fulfilment lies with the respective Government department or agency. Mobile Seva only serves as the channel between the citizen and the participating Government department or agency.
Any Government department or agency at the central, state or local level interested in providing mobile based services can use the Mobile Seva platform of DeitY. The objective of Mobile Seva is to provide a common whole-of-government mobile platform to all Government departments and agencies in the country to avoid any duplication of infrastructure.
Mobile Seva supports the following delivery channels for
development and deployment of mobile-based applications for
public services. As the mobile-based technologies are
constantly evolving, more channels may be added in future as
the need arises.
Though m-governance may be seen as an extension of e-governance services, existence of e-governance services is not a prerequisite for deployment of m-governance services. The mobile-based innovative public services to be deployed under the ambit of this framework and implementation strategy are aimed at extending the reach of electronic public services to all citizens, especially those who are unable or unwilling to access public services through internet or those who simply prefer to use mobile devices. Government departments and agencies can directly start providing m-governance services through Mobile Seva though they may not be currently offering any e-governance services.
Government departments and agencies can directly register for Mobile Seva through the eSMS option on the Mobile Seva portal at: https://services.mgov.gov.in/. Please refer to 'Department Services' tab on the Mobile Seva home page for further details. DeitY and C-DAC shall provide all the necessary guidance and assistance to all Government departments and agencies to develop mobile based applications for delivering their services.
The concerned Government departments and agencies will be responsible for creating and updating mobile-ready content for their respective services.
DeitY, C-DAC, or other designated agencies, will undertake awareness creation and capacity building exercises for according greater visibility to the mobile governance initiative amongst various stakeholders and potential beneficiaries across Government, industry, businesses, civil society organisations and citizens.