mGov is Part of eGov is Part of Gov
The concept of mGov, "mobile government," stands for the use of mobile wireless communication technology within government administration and in its delivery of services and information to citizens and firms.
The big picture is that the government of Sweden does not single out mobile communication from electronic communication or any other communication channel. The appropriations for government agencies rarely mention ICT as a budgetary line item. The agencies are funded to achieve political goals that do not mention ICT and so the agencies are free to use the appropriate means to best achieve the goals. This calls for the use of the most appropriate services and communication channels. In a modern society, this of course means to embrace the use of mobile options.
An Information Society For All, furthermore, implies that the various channels of communications must be accessible and affordable throughout the country. Everyone in Sweden should have access to effective and reasonably priced telecom services and at the same time national assets, including the radio spectrum, shall be used in the best possible way. An outflow of this line of reasoning is that the licenses for the third-generation mobile telephony system and the successor to GSM (i.e., UMTS/IMT-2000; 3G for short) should not be auctioned but given free of charge to applicants who could best provide and maintain a wide geographical coverage. Based on these criteria, three 3G applicants were chosen and they have all made commitments to cover at least 99.98 per cent of the population in Sweden as early as the end of year 2003. They have in their applications shown that they can fulfill their very extensive commitments.
Will the opportunities of the forthcoming 3G networks be used by the agencies? Most likely. But, in line with Swedish tradition, it is up to the individual agencies to decide when, how and based on what business cases. However, in April 2003, Mr. Gunnar Lund, the minister responsible for the management of the state agencies, summoned all the director generals and 'suggested' that it would be a good idea for them to increase the efforts to become 24/7 agencies.
A "24/7 agency" provides services and information irrespective of traditional office hours. It means self-service is possible whenever feasible and using the communication channels preferred by the citizens and firms. The potential to expand and popularize this public service solution, especially when the 24/7 services can be accessed by wireless terminals (laptops and phones), is believed to be great, both in the country and for export. Mobile online public services are one of the selling arguments for the expansion of the new communications technologies. As we shall see, however, so far the mobile killer applications are few and far between.
Schematically, the 24/7 service channels may be categorized as follows:
- Internet services: Web, e-mail, and mobile client programs
- Telephony services: automated attendants, service telephones, call centers
- Television services: teletext, interactive digital television.
Since over 80 per cent of the population have access to mobile phones and since the line up of 3G service providers have committed themselves to cover 99.98 per cent of the population by the end of 2003, mGov is seen as an effective way of communicating within and with the public agencies. The demand for mobile services in general continues to increase and the demand for mGov follows this trend.
Examples of mGov Applications
WAP-Enabled Services
In attempting to use a standard mobile phone as a terminal for information access, the information window is very small. Setting up access sessions is quite difficult, the information flow is very slow, the numerical keyboard is miniaturized and cumbersome to use, there is almost no storage memory and the monetary cost of being connected is noticeable. Yet the WAP-enabled employment services of the National Swedish Labor Market Board that was introduced as early as December 1999, can count on some 10,000 hits per month.
SMS Services
There are other areas of the employment services that are better tailored to mobile phones. It is possible, for example, to subscribe to information on job postings that match the profile of "the type of job I'm interested in," Hits will be e-mailed and the e-mail can be read using a mobile phone. Another service is that mobile phone numbers for SMS can be published in the job seeker's CV so that job provider can get in touch via an SMS.
The city of Stockholm has put in place a similar mobile channel to find temporary workers for the daycare and special-needs area. Here it is critical to quickly find temporary workers when the regular workers are absent. Each morning a group of SMS's go out to the pool of registered will-work-temps and the first responding temps acquire the jobs. This qualifies as a "killer application" (or rather 'rescue application'). A likewise simple and highly interesting application is currently being implemented in some of the schools in Stockholm. To the dislike of the students, their parents can get SMS notifications in case of no-shows.
The health and medical care section of the Uppsala County Council has started using SMS to enable patients to read their medical records. The concept is called "the personal health and medical records account" and is said to be the equivalent to Internet banking. When registering for such an account, User name and PIN code are established and also the accountholder's mobile phone number. Having logged into one's personal health and medical records account, having keyed a user name and PIN code, the system verifies the user and then sends an SMS with a second (one-time) password, which again is keyed in, whereby the system eventually verifies the authorization of the user. After the user is authenticated, it is possible for the user to read and view his/her records. The cost for authorizing the records is billed to the County Council.
The Swedish Customs, who wished to give infrequent exporters the possibility to use the Web site "My Customs" to register exports and imports, recently introduced a similar authentication system.
Finally, SMS is more and more being used as a tool for reminding people of their appointments and obligations and also for informing commuters on delayed train arrivals.
The small handheld mobile phones that started out as "voice terminals" are increasingly being used as "teletext terminals" and are consequently being equipped with alphanumeric keyboards. By and large, SMS is good news for government.
Payment Services
Attempts to use mobile phones as payment terminals have been made in the private sector. Some municipalities have looked into the possibilities of using mobile phones to pay for bus tickets and similar small-fee items. In the public and private sectors alike, the only such payment systems that seem to be thriving are those dealing with automobile parking. The city of Stockholm, Huddinge University Hospital, and airports operated by the Swedish Civil Aviation Authority, are examples of mParking providers at the three Swedish government levels. The system is worthy of description since it is a case of true win-win mobile services.
The viable mParking concept is that the car driver (or, in many cases, the driver's employer) is a registered user of the mParking system and simply uses a mobile phone to log in and log out when occupying a parking space. Payment is deducted only for the exact parking time. This system enables the users to ensure that they will neither be overcharged for the time spent in the parking garage, nor have a fear of being fined for not having paid for the space. There is no need to go searching for the nearest ticketing machine, nor is there a need to look for loose change. A payment receipt comes via mail or SMS. The cars carry mParking stickers and the parking wardens use handheld devices to check if the cars are logged in. The benefits to the parking operator, includes less hassle with ticket machines and parking meters, better cash flow and better statistics.
Mobile Elderly-Care Workers
Several of the 289 Swedish municipalities have implemented or are running pilot applications, the focus of which is to provide field workers with information on elderly, ailing or handicapped people in need of home care. By providing field workers with small portable devices for updating information on their work schedules, for example, they don't have to start their working day by visiting the central care office. Also when paying visits to the needy citizens, they can use short codes to input information on actions taken or not taken, so as to ease the hand-over to the next care worker.
The system can be combined with local-based information services to the field workers and the field workers' positions can be registered also (which is seen as a worker safety issue). Applications are also under way, in which the field workers' visiting logs are made accessible by the needy themselves, or their relatives.
Mobile Government Inspectors
Government inspectors are in need of field tools just like the municipal care workers. In this case the level of information security and integrity is considerably higher, maybe not for forestry, agriculture and fishery inspectors, but definitely in the area of homeland security. The concerned Swedish agencies have tasked a committee to define a secure and interoperable mobile solution.
Mobile Civil Servants
With the advent of more powerful and diverse mobile devices and more powerful networks, the rank-and-file civil servants want to be able to work unbundled from their traditional offices without having to give up the office-based ICT support. They want to be able to make unbundled phone calls -- done. They want to be able to send and receive e-mail on the move -- done, but only in an asynchronous mode. They want to browse and interact with the agency Intranet -- not done by far, especially not for the small- and middle-size agencies.
The access frontier is moving forward step by step. Riksdagen, the Swedish Parliament, is an interesting live and full-scale testbed. Parliamentarians and staff personnel are being equipped with 'PC enabled' mobile phones (SonyEricsson P800), and a combined WAP gateway and firewall was set up as an electronic front office to the Lotus Notes-based back-office systems. Having achieved this solution, the moving frontier has increasingly been confronted with the users' appetite for seamless roaming and longer meantime between battery recharging.
In 2003 the Karolinska Hospital advanced its bedside applications to a stage incorporating the largest wireless LAN (IEEE 802.11b) installation in northern Europe with 300 access points and more than 300 clients. The users also carry iPaq pocket PCs with medical references, drug information, diagnostic codes, etc. The employed system for electronic health care records goes under the name BMS and has been developed by IBM in cooperation with hospitals in Sweden and Denmark.
A wireless application by its very nature is more open for intruders than its wired equivalent. The wireless access points at the Karolinska Hospital are about to migrate from a 40-bit encryption solution (WEP) to a Virtual Private Network (VPN) providing 128-bit encryption. Radio interference between the various mobile devices and medico technical devices is not seen as a problem.
What is a concern, however, is that (mobility) solutions will not be scalable and possible to integrate unless there are standards for communication protocols, electronic health care records architecture, storage format, and not least for concepts and terminologies.
Challenges and Plans
We can foresee that tomorrow's mGov applications will include interactive services where sensitive information will be exchanged and potentially accessible to third parties. The security aspects of this development must be seriously handled in order to sustain public confidence.
A possible threat to the development of mGov is the fact that the development and production of mobile devices aimed at the 3G networks has not been coordinated in time with the construction of the networks. This will initially mean that only a very small proportion of the population will have access to new services. As with many new technologies, the cost involved with adopting the 3G technologies will most likely deter a vast majority of the general public initially. For mGov, this means that during a transition period of many years, information must be accessible with parallel technical solutions. All put together, designing services and applications for mGov, which already today is a challenge considering the wide variety of technical devices available for receiving information, might prove to be a noticeable obstacle.
As elaborated above, Swedish agencies have considerable independence from the central government ministries. This has the effect that agencies make independent decisions on service delivery channels. The track record of the agencies by and large indicate a continued commitment do develop front-office applications with accessible and useful services supported by back-office modernization.
The government in 2003 announced that a new body would be formed, the task of which would be to pave the way for e-interoperability across agencies.
Technical Roaming As touched upon in the mHospital section, moving an ICT device around, while interacting with other devices and resources, presupposes the existence of a whole range of standards. Some of these standards are very technical in nature and take a very long time to develop. The role of the Government Agency Board would be to encourage standards-based procurement and development, in particular open-source standards.
Network roaming
Moving around means to get further from one device and nearer to another and it means moving out of one type of network into another. A good example would be when a user of a combined Bluetooth/IP/Wi-Fi mobile phone gets up from the office desk, moves around in the office, steps outdoors, gets into the car and drives away -- all the time being connected and not noticing the technical handover between the nets involved. By mid 2002 it was not possible to send images (MMS) across the two biggest Swedish networks. Again, the government's procurement strength can be used to bring about changes.
Information Roaming
Previously, several situations were described where there is a need for information interoperability (e.g. by using XML, etc.) and access uniformity (e.g. by WAP- and SMS-enabled agency Web sites). Citizens and firms have the right to demand an unbroken information supply and interaction chain. This area is a prime target for the Swedish Government Agency Board to be inaugurated in the autumn of 2003. A connected issue is how small- and medium-sized agencies will be able to manage the transition to a mobile state. Perhaps with the help of purchased mobile enabler function (an infrastructure service of sorts). The mobile thrust at the Swedish Parliament incorporates a mobile integration center.
Breaking News
There are some 200 different mServices available in Sweden, some of which are provided by and/or used by public-sector organizations. The latest mGov application was released on May 19, 2003, and goes under the name MapMate. It is the first ever wireless map system and was developed by the National Land Survey of Sweden. It works well with GSM (2G) and GPRS (2.5 G), and its performance will increase substantially with the advent of 3G.
The user needs a handheld terminal -- currently PDAs with the PocketPC operating system is supported. In order to be able to communicate wirelessly, there must also be a mobile Internet connection via a mobile phone, a PC-card phone or the like. When connecting a GPS to the terminal a map over the current position can be fetched and the position can be shown in the map.
The system can fetch information via mobile Internet and downloaded maps are cached on the terminal. This results in lower communication costs and less dependencies for mobile Internet access. Maps can also be preloaded from a CD covering a set of basic maps or by browsing maps while connected to a stationary Internet connection. Preloaded maps will of course be needed in areas not covered by a mobile service provider, i.e., in remote areas such as in the wilderness or at the sea.
This article is excerpted from a report titled: "A Swedish View on Mobile Government" by Olov Östberg, Senior Advisor at Statskontoret, The Swedish Agency for Public Administration.
Quelle: Center for Digital Government, June 2004
