eGovernment for Development

Evaluation

mGovernment Benefits and Challenges

mGovernment can bring potential benefits for the public sector, but it also faces challenges, as discussed below.

• Benefits
• Challenges

Benefits

The main benefit that m-government brings is its boundary-breaking potential: truly allowing working on an anywhere, anytime basis and helping to create a truly integrated digital nervous system for government. Because of its immediacy and convenience, it also reduces the barriers to public service operations, encouraging citizens or service providers to make use of the technology where previously barriers were discouragingly high.

These core benefits can be seen reflected in a broader set of m-government benefits, including:

• Increasing the productivity of public service personnel : m-government allows public servants to enter data into digital systems exactly where they are in the field. Not only does this move data-gathering closer to real-time operations, it also reduces the time public servants spend on data activities, thus releasing more of their time for value-added, service-related activities. For example, where previously reports would be noted on paper in the field and then retyped back at base, they can now be entered direct, not only removing duplication of effort but also reducing the number of data errors.
• Increasing the effectiveness of public service personnel : public servants in the field currently have to make do with the data they carry around with them - in their heads or in portable files. With m-government, they can take the whole of digitised government with them into the field, allowing them to make much better-informed decisions and actions.
• Improving the delivery of government information and services : m-government can deliver data and services whenever and wherever the citizen is. This has a benefit to citizens - they can get immediate access to whatever they want no matter where they are. It also has a benefit to governments - for example in sending terror alerts or other very time-sensitive information, m-government provides the greatest chance of getting through quickly and directly.
• Increasing channels for public interactions : m-government (where not used to substitute for other channels) provides an additional channel for interactions all stakeholders in governance - service deliverers, policy makers, service consumers, civil society representatives. This provides greater choice.
• Lower costs leading to higher participation : the hope in relation to the political process is that, by reducing the time and effort of communication, m-government will encourage more communication, from e-voting, to contributions to political debates, to complaints or queries.

Challenges

mGovernment does face a number of challenges:

• Cost : m-government tends to be yet one further channel for e-government, in which case it will create additional costs. This will continue until m-government can truly substitute for other delivery channels. Such substitution will be viable for applications within government. However, it would create serious problems for systems linking to citizens given the number of people who are likely to remain without mobile ICT devices for the foreseeable future. Hence, such systems are likely to be cost-addition rather than cost-substitution initiatives. At least some governments have been able to adopt innovative costing strategies, for example, using fee-sharing arrangements that avoid the public sector having to provide many up-front costs.
• mDigital divide : as just noted, not everyone has a mobile phone. In particular, older and poorer groups in society tend to be excluded from this technology. If there are benefits to be had from m-government, these groups will be denied them, and a challenge to m-government is to ensure it is not just one more way in which the "haves" benefit at the expense of the "have nots".
• Mobile mindsets : mobile devices - cell phones particularly - are seen by many as tools more for fun and entertainment than for serious activities. Yet politics is a serious business involving difficult choices. Aligning these two mismatched worlds may be difficult. One sign already emerging of this underlying tension is the use of m-government systems for playing pranks, such as hoax messaging, encouraged by the anonymity that many mobile devices (which are often unregistered) offer.
• Trust/security : if m-government is to encompass m-payment systems or other transactional public services, then it must have good security and must be trusted. As yet, there is still a credibility gap to be crossed for many mobile device users.
• Data overload : mobile devices increase the pressures of a world in which users are permanently connected: "always on". These permanent connections increase the number of messages circulating and can create a blizzard of communications - some valuable, some not - in which public service communications can come to be devalued or lost.