After e-government, m-government. The idea of the state permanently streaming data to and from your mobile phone may be some people's nightmare. In Sweden, it's already reality. In a country where 88% of the population have mobiles, most public bodies either use the technology or plan to. The national tax authority, customs agency and several local authorities already communicate with their "customers" via SMS text.
However, the channel isn't suitable for everything. At least one service has been discontinued because it threatened to swamp subscribers with messages.
One of the biggest users is the national tax authority. This year, more than 90,000 of Sweden's 7m taxpayers carried out their annual dealings with the government entirely by mobile phone. This is possible because the tax authority sends a pre-completed form to every taxpayer, calculating how much they owe. All they need to do is agree to the assessment - by post, phone, internet or text message.
Alf Nilsson, the agency's director-general, says citizens have an incentive to use electronic channels: "It would cost them 6 krona (about 50p) by post." The agency likewise: it calculates it saves 13 kronor (about £1) for every approval filed electronically.
Mobile technology is also cutting costs at the Swedish customs agency and for its customers. In a scheme called Gateway Sweden, lorry drivers get customs clearance for their goods by mobile phone, saving hours, especially when bound for Russia. "It's a no-stop shop - they just drive through," says Lars Karlsson, national director. The drivers receive a message on the move telling them their cargo has been cleared, with a reference number if they're stopped for checking.
Holidaymakers get a mobile service, too. Swedes browsing in shops overseas can text customs to check their duty free allowances. There's no need to specify where they're calling from, as the GSM network identifies the country.
Meanwhile, by the end of this year, drivers in 40 Swedish towns and cities will be able to pay parking charges by mobile phone. The capital, Stockholm, already collects more than 8% of parking fees in this way.
Subscribers to the service send a text on arriving and departing from their parking space, and the system charges a credit card accordingly. A windscreen sticker tells traffic wardens that the car is a member of the scheme; they call up details on the database to make sure the driver is playing fair. "There's no hassle with coins, you pay only for the exact time you're parked and there are no fines," says Carl Rogberg of Mint, a mobile transaction service company. The company plans to launch the technology in the UK this autumn.
Under the banner "mCity", the Stockholm city government is setting up a battery of mobile services projects, for the benefit of care workers, commuters and students. "It's not a high-tech project, it's aimed at creating sustainable solutions to people's problems," says Kristina Lundevall, mCity project manager. Under the scheme, any city department can apply for a slice of an annual m-government budget of about 5m kronor (about £400,000).
Services so far set up include:
- managing truancy and absence at schools. Pupils at some secondary schools can report themselves absent by keying their ID number and a four-digit code into an automated system, which emails their teachers. Teachers also text parents when a child doesn't turn up.
- Managing care workers' rosters. Home-care nurses and other workers plan their schedules on a website. If one has to miss an appointment, the system automatically texts other workers with the right skills until a replacement is found.
- Keeping 80,000 students in Stockholm up to date with news such as cancelled lectures and last-minute bargains.
Not all these m-government ideas are new to Britain. Authorities such as Rotherham borough council already accept text messages and the London borough of Wandsworth allows drivers to pay for parking by mobile phone. What impresses about the Swedish initiatives is the level of take-up and the amount of experience gathered. In some cases, this has led managers to accept that mobile technology is not the right channel.
Stockholm's public transport authority, SL, which runs a huge range of e-services, including an automated voice-recognition service for planning journeys, tried generating text messages from its internal signalling systems whenever services were delayed. However, even a system as smooth running as Stockholm's generates a huge number of messages, says Bjorn Dalborg, director. "We concluded that was not the way to do it."
Quelle: Guardian, 10.06.2004
