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Mobile Governance begins in Himachal Pradesh

Mobile Governance begins in Himachal Pradesh

05 Oct, Gangtok: Himachal Pradesh govt has taken an initiave to provide a range of govt related services and informations to the public through mobile which is one of the easiest and quickest forms of governance.

Sh B K Agarwal principal secreatary (Information Technology) told that the mobile governance scheme has been launched in shimla, solan and hamirpur districts in the initial stage under which Mobile- technology and mobile services are being used as a communication platform to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of governance. This is largely being used as a two-way communication services channel between the government and citizens which enables the people to use their mobile phones to get informations relating to various departments and added that in the initial stage the informations like driving licence ,arms license,birth certificates,vehicle registrations are being provided free of cost to the general public on their mobiles .
He told that under the scheme the general public is requested to mention their mobile number on the applications submitted to various departments and concerned department inform the citizens about the status of their pending work through SMS. and send SMS to the concerned person when their work is done . He told that IT Mission has further identified around 20 services from eight government departments which it believes can be covered by the M-governance project, Sh B.K.Agarwal said. irrigations and public health , agriculture , horticulture, state electricity board, state transport corporations ,forest and educations are some of the key government departments identified for implementation of the M-governance project. he told that all the secreataries, head of departments, deputy commissioners have been asked to implement this scheme by starting M-Governance in their respective departments and added that
notices of meetings and reminders etc among the govt officers would be send through Mobile governance in future to ensure quick and personal delivery as well as reduce the use of paper
Sh B.K.Agarwal told Himachal Pradesh has a distinction of having the highest tele-density in the country with urban areas have registered around 90% teledensity which is highly benificial for success of M -governance in the state .He told that M/s Spice Digital Limited has been selected as the Service Provider for the SMS Gateway Services. on the 8 paise per SMS charges and added that the process of establishing the SMS Gateway has been completed. He told that there are three types of facilities available for sending the SMSs. under: which
. facility to send bulk messages to group of users (citizens or Government Employees) in one step has been created which will be utilized for sending notices for the meeting and information to general public. He told that under the second type facility has been created to
send SMSs regarding the specific service to individual users (citizens or Government Employees) as per requirement. The Departments will use this for sending SMSs regarding status of the service when the same is ready for delivery or there is some deficiency in the documents submitted by the citizen. He told that under the third type facility has been created
for the citizen where they can get some information out of the database of the department (if available) by sending SMS using a pre-determined code on 56300. For example result of examinations, information about Government services (procedures and requisite documents) etc. If the database is not available information may be provided to the service provider by creating the same.
He told that in order to utilize the facility, letters have been issued to all the Deputy Commissioners, all the Secretaries to the Government of Himachal Pradesh and all Head of Departments in Himachal Pradesh with the request to utilize the service to the maximum for saving Government resources and facilitating the citizens of the State. and added that in order to facilitate the maximum utilization of this facility, the charges for an initial period of 1 year will borne by IT Department.

The accounts have been created for all the Secretaries, DCs and some of the departments. Theses officers are sending notices/reminders to their subordinate offices on click of a mouse. This type of communication will helps in reducing paper work in sending routine notices and reminders Mr B.K.Agarwal added .
He told that entire state will be brought under the M-Governance by the end of year 2009

Govt of Himachal Pradesh
Press liasion Office , Himachal Bhawan Mandi House New Delhi -1
New Delhi October 5,2009

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