ICTA focuses on mobile based service mechanism

by Gamini WARUSHAMANA

Higher mobile telephony penetration in the country can be used to make government agencies more efficient in service delivery, said the head of technology and chief software architect of the Information and Communication Technology Agency (ICTA) Sanjaya Karunasena.

"Mobile government or M-government is the new concept that many countries are considering in efficient service delivery to the public", he said in an exclusive interview with the Sunday Observer.

Sanjaya Karunasena

Communication technology has evolved making mobile telephony the most popular and commonly used communication mode in all parts of the world.

This is the global trend. Especially in the Asian region, many countries are considering the optimal use of mobile phones to deliver various services.

In Sri Lanka, Internet penetration is still very low. It is below 10%. However, mobile penetration is above 60% and is growing fast. In addition to mobile penetration, mobile hand sets have also evolved to more advanced level.

Today the processing power of a hand set is equivalent to a PC we used 2-3 years back. You can even run a Java application on your mobile phone. New Field Communication (NFC) enabled mobile phones can be used as a payment card and it has the capability of giving information to a card reader.

The prices of hand sets are also falling and becoming more affordable.

ICTA has focused its attention on developing a mobile based service delivery mechanism.

We have already started a SMS based information dissemination system - the 1919 hotline of the Government Information Centre (GIC).

But M-government is a more advanced service delivery system. One important aspect of the system is the mobile based payment mechanism. In Sri Lanka the mobile money concept is still not legalised. However, some countries especially in Africa, effectively use this concept as mobile money is legalised.

Banks use this system to deliver services to remote areas and mobile operators are used as messengers to transfer money from one account to another.

Mobile payment

Mobile payment can be easily used in bill payments in Sri Lanka, as most of the utility providers such as the Water Supply and Drainage Board and Ceylon Electricity Board already have the required back end technology to implement this system.

Any organisation that has the facility for electronic transactions can use the same back end systems with slight modifications to handle mobile transactions.

Banks are still hesitant to use this technology and the only bank that is working on a mobile enabled money transferring system is the Bank of Ceylon.

One of the key issues that obstruct the progress of this technology is non availability of a legal framework to recognise mobile transactions.

All transactions should be covered by Central Bank regulations and the core of these regulations is that transactions should be recorded and traceable.

If banks are ready to accept responsibility, the law is already in place, because the banks are covered by CB regulations.

Banks should recognises the potential in this mobile fund transferring mechanism.

If you take any of the existing mechanism of electronic payments Internet based payments or credit/debit cards, the penetration is very limited.

It is difficult to promote it in all social groups and infrastructure such as ATM machines are limited to main cities or towns.

However, mobile phones have already penetrated to over 60% of the population and even the cheapest hand set can send and receive SMS.

Karunasena said that the ICTA continues its e-government initiatives to make government services more efficient. The objective of e-government is to make a citizen centric government. In this model the Government should have all information relevant to its citizens on-line and should be able to provide all services to them. In today's typical government mechanism this is not possible. For instance if you want to get your driving licence you have to go to several government agencies to collect various documents and submit them to the RMV.

e-government

In the e-government concept, the Government should have all these information, the service delivery agency can access them on-line, verify them and provide the required service.

We started issuing revenue licences for motor vehicles and the issue of birth and death certificates in the Western Province on-line. These services will be extended to other provinces in the future.

Some countries such as Japan and Korea have gone a step further and now implement a concept called Citizens Governance.

In this concept citizens can take part in the decision making process of the government which is transparent.

They can criticise, make comments and suggestions.

Karunasena assured that the ICTA is vigilant on the security aspect of all IT systems introduced to the country and that the technical as well as legal framework are in place before launching any project.

He acknowledged that the human factor is very important in efficient service delivery and technology alone will not make these processes function well.

Attitudes and work culture of government officers have to be changed and the relevant agencies that have already implemented new systems should regularly check whether the system is functioning well, he said.