Ip~nple ipolitics Ipolicy I-:rn-_g-OV-O~-O-al-S _c_e ~ __

The future is in your handsCitizen services at the press of a thumb. An expert explains the backendintegration required to make it happen

Zia Saquib

E-governance is making

strides, but it remains re­stricted primarily to the useof computer-based internetaccess to deliver services.

How do you reach out to more citizensand deliver public services, then? Thishas made governments think of newtechnologies, such as mobile phones.

Looking at the increasing numberof mobile phone subscribers and itsreach, it has become imperative to offergovernment services on mobile phonesto ensure that the vision of nationale-governance plan (NeGP) to providegovernment services to every citizen attheir doorstep becomes a reality. Mobilephones can be a potential tool for thenational e-governance services deliv­ery gateway (NSDG),state e-governanceservices delivery gateway (SSDG)anddomain gateways (like passport gatewayand MCA21gateway).

The current structure of NSDG/SSDGorthe domain gateway should be supple­mented with a framework for mobilegovernance. A separate infrastructure isrequired for seamless integration withthe backend department through theexisting NSDG/SSDGe-gov exchange in­frastructure. It will provide common in­terface for mobile-based services (SMS),unstructured supplementary servicedata (USSD),interactive voice responsesystem (IVRS),cell broadcasting service(CBS), location-based services (LBS)andmobile internet (through GPRS/3G,etc).There is a need to generate contents for

44 GovernanceNow I January 16-31, 2012

Mobile phones can bea potential tool for thenational e-governanceservices delivery gateway,state e-governance servicesdelivery gateway anddomain gateways (likepassport gateway andMCA21 gateway).

Weather info on mobile for

Haryana farmersThe Haryana AgriculturalUniversity is providingweather information tofarmers on their mobiles­

free of charge. The servicewas launched last yearby the state agriculturedepartment. Weatherforecast is sent in Hindi anda voice SMS service is alsoavailable for farmers who areilliterate. They just need tosubmit an application to thenearest agriculture officer.

delivering the service on the mobile.The mobile e-governance services deliv­

ery platform (MSDP)is one such infra­structural element, which provides anintegrated platform for delivery of gov­ernment services to citizens over mobiledevices using SMS,USSD,IVRS,CBS,LBS,or mobile applications.

MSDPhas a number of subsystemswhich collectively facilitate the deliveryof services ..

Mobile e-gov service delivery gateway:MSDGis a subsystem which deliversgovernment services over mobile devicesusing mobile applications installed onthe user's handset. It provides a differentset of mobile-based services to the back­end departments and citizens. As MSDGis developed on interoperability inter­face protocol/interoperability interfacespecifications (IIP!IIS) standards of thegovernment of India, it provides seam­less integration with backend depart­ment through the existing NSDG/SSDGe-gov exchange infrastructure. Backenddepartments will be connected to MSDGfor mobile-based services.

SMS gateway services: It act as a com­mon service to the e-gov exchange andare used to deliver SMS-based services.

The SMSgateway supports both push­and pull-based services where a com­mon piece of information can be sentto a group of people based on gender,location and community options. De­partments can use the SMSportal orprogrammatic interface to push SMSesto people. Citizens can request for spe­cifkinformation at an individual levelthrough the pull-based SMSservices.

A short code, 51969, has been reservedby the government for e-governance ser­vices and this code is already integratedwith all telecom operators of the country.

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States have gradually started to availSMS services. Goa, Maharashtra, Jammuand Kashmir, Nagaland, Puducherry,Meghalaya and Manipur are using theservice. Integration with Karnataka andTamil Nadu is under way. The nationalpopulation register (NPR),which is beingimplemented by the national institute ofelectronics and information technologyand Maharashtra public service commis­sion, uses this service. All major telecomoperators have agreed to charge peopledepending on their SMS plan (normallyany SMSshort code is charged at pre­mium rates, around ~3 for each request).

USSD-based services: The unstructuredsupplementary services data (USSD)isa session-based service unlike the SMS,which is a store and forward service.Through this, a user can send commandto an application in text format. It acts asa trigger for the application. At present,this service is mainly being used for bal­ance check and mobile prepaid recharge.Getting single short code for this service,similar to the SMSshort code, is beingtried upon with the help of DoT.But thelimitation here is of three digits and itstarts with * and ends with #,

IVR-based services: The interactivevoice response (IVR)system is an ex­ample of computer-telephone integra­tion (CTI).The most common way for aphone to communicate with a computer

is through the tones gener­ated by each key on thetelephone keypad. Theseare known as dual-tonemulti-frequency (DTMF)signals. A computer needsspecial hardware called a

mPOWER telephony board or tele­

INDIA phony card to understandthe DTMFsignals producedby a phone. A simple IVR

system requires a computer hooked toa phone line through a telephony boardand some inexpensive IVRsoftware. TheIVRsoftware allows to pre-record greet­ings and menu options that a caller canselect using telephone keypad.

More advanced IVRsystems includespeech-recognition software that allowsa caller to communicate with a computerusing simple voice commands. Speechrecognition software has become sophis­ticated enough to understand names andlong numbers. The important (passport)and some basic (ration card) services ofthe government are compelling servicesand draw a lot of enquiries from the citi­zens. If automated, undue overheads canbe reduced.

M-gov apps store: The m-governanceapplication store hosts various mobileapplications for government services.Applications are being developed forJava and Android-based phones. Twenty­seven generic applications have been

developed which can be customisedbased on a department's need. Applica­tions can be developed by independentdeveloper or any company, which aftercertain tests and verification processes,can be allowed to host them on the appstore. There are different views for citi­zens, developers and administrators. Citi­zens and developers need to register be­fore they access it. People can downloadthese applications from this app storeon individual handsets and use these ap­plications to access government servicesanytime and anywhere. There will bethree versions of the app store, one fornormal web, second for mobile web, andthird version will be a native applicationon the mobile phone itself.

Cell broadcasting-based services: Itis relevant when certain notifications/alerts have to be passed to people in aparticular area. This can be very helpfulin case of pre and post disaster manage­ment. The MSDPplatform will connectto all telecom operators for CBSfor thisservice and provide a unified interface tothe departments. Departments can thenuse this unified interface for notificationsand alerts in a particular area.

Location-based services: can be veryuseful for departments to customise theirservices depending on the location of aperson. There are various ways to deter­mine citizens' location. The most popularare the GPSbased location which is themost accurate and the cell tower based lo­cation which is not as accurate as the GPS.MSDPwill connect to such systems andprovide unified interface to departmentsor developers of mobile applications.

Mobile payment services: Most trans­actional government services involvesome amount of payments to be madeto government departments. The mobilepayment services can be used by citizens.

In future other mobile technologies willget integrated with MSDP.It has beenenvisaged that the emerging services likeSIM toolkit based applications will alsobe made available on the MSDP.•

Saquib is executive director, C-DAC,Mumbai.

DIT, government of India, has collaboratedwith C-DAC to develop a mobile servicedelivery platform

www.GovernanceNow.com 45

(HINKY SHUKLA

N11'lCATI

INTERVIEW RS SHARMA, DIRECTOR GENERAL, UIDAI

'We are looking forward tolinking Aadhar authenticationwith MSDG'

The unique identification (UI

D) number will be instru­mental in mobile banking,mobile delivery of servicesand mobile authentication.

To know more about how UIDwill fa­cilitate m-governance, Samir Sachde­va and Shubham Batra spoke with RSSharma, director general of the uniqueidentification authority of India (UI­DAI). Here are the excerpts from theinterview:

How do you see the concept ofdelivering public services throughmobile phones?If there is one instrument which isavailable with nearly all Indians to­day, it is the mobile phone. The mo­bile phone, a wireless communica­tion device, has a deep reach and isan optimal medium for delivery of

information and services to the peo­ple. UlDAIis creating online IDs whichare verifiable and authentic able on­line. Now, that being the case, the mo­bile device is the most optimal methodto deploy these technologies becausethat will require minimum infrastruc­tural investments. The mobile phoneserves as a very simple device at thefront end and the complexities aretaken care at the back end. It is a sim­ple device which can be owned andoperated by anyone.

What will be the role of UID in

m-governance?Let's understand what the applica­tions ofUID are. One of the trivial orthe obvious aspects of UIDis unique­ness, removing the duplicates andfakes from the database. Supposeyou have a NREGAdatabase, you can

ensure that there are no duplicatesand no fakes.

The other role, service delivery, ismore important and has a prime rolefor authentication. How does it reallyconnect with various applications?Suppose you want to draw moneyfrom your account in a remote vil­lage. The ATMsare not available inall the villages. If you want to takethe application to the village doorstepthen you need a device for authentica­tion of identity which is the first stepin any service. Like you authenticateyour identity through the smart cardremembering the PIN, similarly au­thenticating your identity on the mo­bile phone will enable you to accessyour bank account and make transac­tions. So UID, in some sense, will facili­tate remote verification of the identitywhich can be done through a simple

phone having a fingerprint reader.

Will there be a biometric-enabled mo­bile device for authentication?We call it a micro automated tellermachine (MicroATM).It is essentiallya mobile device which can communi­cate through the general packet radioservice (GPRS)technology and it hasan attached single fingerprint reader.The device is not so costly. We have de­fined standards and anybody can mak,ethose devices so long as they meet thestandards. We are not getting into anyvendor lock-in kind of situation. Weare not prescribing any model of thedevice but just the design principlewhich this device must have.

Why not consider the mobile itself anidentification proof, as Estonia hasdone?

When you authenticate, there arethree broad principles. Principle one iswhat you know, principle two is whatyou have and principle three is whatyou are. So what you know is essential­ly like personal identification number(PIN), what you have is like the smart­cards or the mobile phones and whatyou are is essentially your biometrics.People talk of two-factor authentica­tion. The mobile phone you are speak­ing from becomes your authentica­tion number one. But to ensure thatit is you who is operating that mobilephone, there has to be another factor.

If you want to draw cash from youraccount, you will need to approach abusiness correspondent or some rep­resentative of the bank. There you willhave to operate the mobile device andthe person has to be satisfied that youare the one who is actually doing thetransactions. In such a case biometricverification is important.

How will you integrate U10 with themobile service delivery gateway(M50G)?This is similar to the Intel Inside con­cept. There are many front end thingsbut the authentication may take placewith a module fitted with every appli­cation. So in MSDG,Aadhaar-based au­thentication will be one of the modesof authentication. Suppose in MSDGan application wants a very strong bio­metric authentication before it can de­liver services, we can use an Aadhaar­based authentication. This module ofauthentication will become common

"Infuture, there will bethree key numbers for aresident-UID number,mobile number and thebank account number.And these three are

very important becauseifyou have access to abank account you will beable to do transactions.UIDwill be able to

authenticate your identityand the mobile number is

there for communication."

to every service domain whosoeverwants to use it. We are looking for­ward to linking Aadhar authenticationwith MSDG.

UIO is implementing a pilotinitiative with the National PaymentCorporation of India (NPCI) inJharkhand. What is the status of that?The pilot project is progressing quitewell. We are working with the state'srural development department and weare attempting to pay the wages underthe NREGAto the people using the mi­cro ATMand the business correspon­dent. We have been in the field for thelast 10 days and have done some trans­actions also. Currently these are realtransactions which are happening af­ter the pilot test. The device, a microATM,might not be exactly like a mo­bile phone, as it will also do a biomet­ric authentication. The device is a littleadvanced but essentially it uses mobiletelephony.

What are the challenges before thispilot project?One of the issues is that when peopleenrolled for Aadhaar they were not re­ally clear about the importance of thebiometrics. They thought that it wasjust a process of enrolment. So at timesthe quality of the biometric was not

the best or there were some biometricexceptions like some people may nothave fingers of 'good quality' or theymay not have fingers at all. But statis­tics say that the bad quality biometricsis less than one percent. However eventhis one percent cannot be denied pub­lic services on the pretext that theirauthentication is not going through.We have to provide methods of dealingwith these exceptions.

That is one challenge because wedon't want somebody to be denied ser­vice due to the failure of the biometricsmatch. DIDAIis only the trusted third­party authenticator. The NREGAwagesare being delivered by their depart­ment people. They are the applicationpeople. When you use our authentica­tion one of the things that you shouldexpect is make arrangement:; for han­dling the exceptions.

50 the exception management is partof the overall strategy?Yes, it is. How do you ensure that thos~people who are not biometrically alJ.­thenticable avail the service? We donot want to deny services to thosepeople.

It is said that in future UlO, mobile andbank account will become a person'sidentity ...It is the roti, kapda aur makaan situa­tion. In future, there will be three keynumbers for a resident-DID number,mobile number and the bank accountnumber. And these three are very im­portant because if you have access toa bank account you will be able to dotransactions. DIDwill be able to au­thenticate your identity and the mobilenumber is there for communication.

Which services you think shouldbecome part of mobile governance?I think one is the self-service bank-

ing transactions, what we call mobilebanking. Delivery of information of alltypes will be another very importantapplication. So these are the two ma­jor things which I see as part of mobil~governance. Then you should also beable to do other transactions like pur­chasing railway tickets, which mayormay not have a financial component.In nutshell, whatever one does on awebsite all of those services should be­come mobile enabled. -

feedback~governancenovv.cOn1

I NTERVI EW Shankar Aggarwal, former additional secretary, OIT, government of India

(Expect a bouquetof 70-75 servicesthrough mobiles byyearend'

mobile governance. How do you planto support them through the policyinitiative?We have identified 20-25 services tobe delivered through mobiles. Theapplication for these services will bedelivered by the centre for devel­opment of advanced computing (C­DAC).But other than these services,there are a host of services whichwill be delivered by the private sec­tor. Most of the private sector playerswho are developing an applicationfor mobile service delivery are theSMEs. We are also thinking of creat­ing a fund which will help the gov­ernment to support those initiativeswhich are innovative in nature.

As head of the nation-

al e-governance plan(NeGP), Shankar Ag­garwal brought for­ward the importance of

mobiles as a medium in deliveringpublic services. Aggarwal, a for­mer additional secretary (e-gover­nance), department of informationtechnology, (who has now joinedas additional secretary, ministryof defence) discusses the develop­ments in area of m-governance inan interview with Samir Sachdeva.

What is the rationale of the mobile

governance policy DITrecentlyformulated?

So far, there was no policy on mobilegovernance but we said that we haveto make use of mobile technology in abig way in the area of e-governance,primarily for two reasons. Firstly, mo­bile has got tremendous reach. Todaymore than 90 crore subscribers are

connected through mobile technology.That means that immediately we canhave access to these 90 crore people.Secondly, mobile technology is verycheap compared to other technolo­gies, so we should take advantage ofit and try to deliver all public servicesthrough it.

So, we thought that we should cre­ate some kind of framework becauseif the government doesn't take initia­tive, none of the telecom providers,application developers or the plat­form developers will take that kind of

an initiative. This platform has to beused by all kinds of stakeholders. Thatmeans citizens on one side, the ap­plication developer on the other side,then the platform developer, telecomservice provider and the device manu­facturer. If you want all the stakehold­ers to come on a single platform thenthe government has to do a little bit ofwork. So this work is done by the gov­ernment in the form of a mobile ser­vices delivery gateway (MSDG).

Has DITtaken any initiative to createthe additional infrastructure needed

to deliver services through mobiletechnology?When we say we are providing a mo­bile service delivery gateway, it isthis platform and on this platform wewill have three or four kinds of ser­vices like SMS-based services, USSD(unstructured supplementary ser­vice data)-based services which arerequired for financial transactions orinteractive voice response (IVR)basedservices or the broadcast services.In case of emergency, if the govern­ment wants to inform everybody thattsunami is going to hit this area, wewill make use of broadcast services. Itmeans that one person is broadcast­ing and we would want the message toreach to millions of people.

There are many small and mediumenterprises (SMEs), value-addedservice (VAS) players who haveinnovative ideas and applications on

How many services you plan todeliver through mobiles, say, by endof2012?

I think at least 25, which we are plan­ning to deliver through our own ef-

forts and maybe another 25 to 50 ser­vices through the private sector. Therewill be a bouquet of about 70-75 ser­vices which will be delivered throughmobiles by 2012.

What are your plans to accelerate thedevelopment efforts?Once we start this journey then theprivate sector will take it to greaterheights. So, it is a question of demandand supply. If there is a market, thereis a value and there is some kind ofbusiness model, then people will cometo it by themselves.

What is status of the mobile services

delivery gateway and what will be itsrole?

The MSDGis a platform. So it has gotsome hardware component and somesoftware component. On this platformwe are delivering different kinds ofservices. Suppose somebody has ap­plied for a ration card and we wantto convey to him that his applicationhas been received. We can inform himthrough SMSand later through an­other SMSwe can inform him that hisration card is ready and he can comeand collect it from a designated loca­tion. These are SMS-based services,and then there are payment-basedservices. Suppose you want to makepayment for a utility bill or railwayticket or even movie ticket. These pay­ments can also be facilitated throughmobiles.

Then IVRsis another area. Lot ofpeople are not comfortable with the in­ternet, computers or even writing textmessages on a mobile. With the helpof voice they can seek services and theservices can also be delivered withthe help of voice. And then there areunstructured supplementary servic-es data (USSD)based, which are idealwhere there is a direct connection be­tween the recipient and the speaker,like in the financial services. In suchcases, security is very important. Onewould not like your financial informa­tion to travel through a third agency.One would like to have a direct connec­tion between the bank and the custom­er. That is being provided under USSD.

Will MSDG address the interopera­bility issue in some way?

Ifwe are not able to address the is­sue of interoperability then a wholelot of people will not be able to comeon a single platform. All kinds of tele­com service providers and applica­tion developers have to come on asingle platform, they have to adhereto some discipline and that disciplinewill only come with certain stan­dards. And those standards will ensureinteroperability.

How will you enforce these standards?Will there be a law for that?

"Once we start this journeythen the private sectorwill take it to greaterheights. So, it is a questionof demand and supply. Ifthere is a market, there isa value and there is some

kind of business model, thenpeople will come to it bythemselves.

At the moment, we do not have theforce of law. Under the electronic de­livery of services bill, there are certainprovisions under which we can en­force certain standards. But that willtake some time. In any case what weare saying is that once the standardsare evolved by the DrT,then it willbe in interest of everyone to adhereto those standards. The business willcome only when a service providerwill be able to deliver services acrossdifferent platforms. For that adherenceto certain discipline is must.

Is a consultative process on evolvingthese standards under way?Yes,we have asked our officers to starta dialogue with the industry and aca­demia and they have already takensome steps. Within six months we willhave some basic standards in place.

What about the feedback of industryon the consultation paper (which wasthe precursor of the m-gov policy)?Everybody is on board and everybodywants to take it forward. Actually it isin their interest as it will increase theirrevenue stream. They will be able todo so only when a number of servicesare delivered through mobile technol­ogy. If the government facilitates that,everyone will support it.

Have you finalised some universalcode for government services?We have already taken a short codebut that is for SMS-based services. Nowwe are planning a four-digit code forUSSD-based services. We have alreadyhad discussions with DoT (departmentof telecom) on this and we will have itshortly.

How will the national e-governanceplan and the mission mode projectsrelate with the m-governanceframework?

A decision has been taken at highestlevel that all MMPs will necessarily in­tegrate with MSDG.

Most people do not havesmartphones. Will those with onlybasic handsets face any problems inaccessing government services?All these efforts are made for the ben­efit of the common man, who willhave a very ordinary handset. Weare not expecting the user to have asmartphone.

Which states are at the forefront of

delivering public services throughmobile phones?States like Kerala, Goa and Tripura aredoing good work. Maharashtra hastaken up many mobile-based services.States like Uttar Pradesh are deliver­ing some services on mobiles. In duecourse of time, every state governmentwould like to deliver services throughmobiles. _

samir@governancenow.com