Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DietY), Government of India, has recently set up an AppStore for eGovernance Services to facilitate co-creation of mobile applications with private companies and individual app developers. DietY has also conducted a mobile application contest that ended in May, 2013.
The Contest aimed at crowdsourcing innovative mobile applications in the categories of government services, education, e-health, social networking, lifestyle/travel, and productivity tools.
Dr Rajendra Kumar, IAS, Joint Secretary, DeitY gave an exclusive interview to India CoCreates on the government's thinking to make use of collaborative and mobile technologies in developing eGovernance applications. Dr Kumar is a senior officer in the Indian Administrative Service and is currently leading three major e-governance projects within DeitY: the National Population Register (NPR) project, and the new Mobile Governance and E-Pramaan (E-Authentication) projects.
Dr Kumar holds a PhD in international economic development and regional planning and an Master in City Planning from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, an MTech from the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi, and a BTech from the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur. Excerpts from his interview:
How many apps are likely to be co-created with private companies and individual developers in the next one or two years?
I think the numbers could easily be in several hundreds. We have received a huge response to our Mobile App contest. Currently, we are working on evolving a framework to allow the mobile apps developed by private developers to be hosted on the DeitY's mobile App Store.
What do you think are the factors that will serve as incentives or motivations for developers to build eGov mobile apps?
I think the biggest motivation would be to see that their efforts succeed in delivering the desired public services to the people. DeitY's m-governance initiative provides the platform to enable that to happen.
Do you think, in due course, the app development can be made even simpler? For instance, you can provide Cloud based developer toolkit – the way Google, Apple, and Microsoft do – and make app development virtual and simple even for citizens, who may not have technical skills like developers?
As you mentioned, developers already have access to a host of tools for developing apps easily. DeitY's Mobile Service Delivery Gateway (MSDG) is based on cloud technology and we encourage developers to use
the latest techniques to develop their applications.
The IT companies (like Google, Apple, and Microsoft), support developers by organizing networking and
training events for developers. Do you plan to undertake any activities to create an eco-system of eGovernance products in India?
The mobile app contest is an effort to develop an ecosystem around mobile applications. We do plan to
work towards involving the developer community more deeply in achieving our objective of mobile governance in the country.
How are you planning to productize IT systems/applications that are already developed by many State
Government agencies and private players?
We have launched an initiative on
rapid replication that aims at productizing successful e-gov applications from
one state to other states. Already one application (e-Pass from Andhra Pradesh)
has been successfully replicated in two other States. We have selected three
more applications for productization and replication under this initiative.
The Contest aimed at crowdsourcing innovative mobile applications in the categories of government services, education, e-health, social networking, lifestyle/travel, and productivity tools.
Dr Rajendra Kumar, IAS, Joint Secretary, DeitY gave an exclusive interview to India CoCreates on the government's thinking to make use of collaborative and mobile technologies in developing eGovernance applications. Dr Kumar is a senior officer in the Indian Administrative Service and is currently leading three major e-governance projects within DeitY: the National Population Register (NPR) project, and the new Mobile Governance and E-Pramaan (E-Authentication) projects.
Dr Kumar holds a PhD in international economic development and regional planning and an Master in City Planning from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, an MTech from the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi, and a BTech from the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur. Excerpts from his interview:
How many apps are likely to be co-created with private companies and individual developers in the next one or two years?
I think the numbers could easily be in several hundreds. We have received a huge response to our Mobile App contest. Currently, we are working on evolving a framework to allow the mobile apps developed by private developers to be hosted on the DeitY's mobile App Store.
What do you think are the factors that will serve as incentives or motivations for developers to build eGov mobile apps?
I think the biggest motivation would be to see that their efforts succeed in delivering the desired public services to the people. DeitY's m-governance initiative provides the platform to enable that to happen.
Do you think, in due course, the app development can be made even simpler? For instance, you can provide Cloud based developer toolkit – the way Google, Apple, and Microsoft do – and make app development virtual and simple even for citizens, who may not have technical skills like developers?
As you mentioned, developers already have access to a host of tools for developing apps easily. DeitY's Mobile Service Delivery Gateway (MSDG) is based on cloud technology and we encourage developers to use
the latest techniques to develop their applications.
The IT companies (like Google, Apple, and Microsoft), support developers by organizing networking and
training events for developers. Do you plan to undertake any activities to create an eco-system of eGovernance products in India?
The mobile app contest is an effort to develop an ecosystem around mobile applications. We do plan to
work towards involving the developer community more deeply in achieving our objective of mobile governance in the country.
How are you planning to productize IT systems/applications that are already developed by many State
Government agencies and private players?
We have launched an initiative on
rapid replication that aims at productizing successful e-gov applications from
one state to other states. Already one application (e-Pass from Andhra Pradesh)
has been successfully replicated in two other States. We have selected three
more applications for productization and replication under this initiative.