Mobile Seva

Mobile Seva is an innovative initiative aimed at mainstreaming mobile governance (m-Governance) in the country. It aims to leverage wireless and new media technology platforms, mobile devices and applications for delivery of public information and services to all citizens and businesses. It aims at widening the reach of, and access to, public services to all citizens in the country, especially in the rural areas by utilizing the much greater penetration of mobile phones in the country. It also leverages the innovative potential of mobile applications in providing public services. The overall strategy aims at making India a world leader in harnessing the potential of mobile governance for inclusive development. Mobile Seva provides a complete ecosystem for enabling the delivery of various electronic government services through mobile devices in an efficient manner with minimum effort for the participating Government departments and agencies. Mobile Seva will also help in enhancing the interoperability of mobile-based services among various Government departments and drastically reduce the cost and time for development and deployment of applications for m-governance services.

Mobile Seva provides all possible mobile based channels for service delivery, e.g., SMS, USSD, IVRS and mobile applications. It will also provide location based services (LBS) and cell broadcasting services (CBS). It provides integrated hardware and software to test and deploy the m-governance applications. It provides various mobile based options for the citizens to apply for and receive public services through their mobile devices irrespective of the network operators to whom they've subscribed. It also has an integrated system for delivering the IVR based services through mobiles and fixed telephones. Mobile Seva supports the delivery of both voice and data services and content in a network and device independent manner to the extent possible and feasible. It also offers shared tools like data collection, helpdesk services, APIs and SDKs to the Government departments and agencies that wish to deploy mobile applications for public services. It also has a provision for metered access so that various agencies and partners of Mobile Seva can account for any fee based services based upon their actual delivery.

Mobile Seva is owned by the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY), Government of India. The technical implementation of Mobile Seva is being done by the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), a DeitY organisation.

Mobile Seva has a provision for metered access so that various agencies and partners of Mobile Seva can account for the fee-based services based upon their actual delivery.

Yes, Mobile Seva provides a fully operational mobile payment gateway. As many transactional government services involve some amount of payments to be made by the service seekers to the Government departments, a Mobile Payment Gateway has been developed incorporating various channels for making electronic payments through mobile devices. These include credit/debit/cash/prepaid cards, SMS based payments through Mobile Money Identifier (MMID), mobile wallets, net banking, etc. The Mobile Payment Gateway has been made available to Government departments and agencies for integration with their applications. Citizens and businesses can use this facility to make payments for various government services through their mobile devices.

The responsibility for service fulfilment lies with the respective Government department or agency. Mobile Seva only serves as the channel between the citizen and the participating Government department or agency.

Any Government department or agency at the central, state or local level interested in providing mobile based services can use the Mobile Seva platform of DeitY. The objective of Mobile Seva is to provide a common whole-of-government mobile platform to all Government departments and agencies in the country to avoid any duplication of infrastructure.

Mobile Seva supports the following delivery channels for development and deployment of mobile-based applications for public services. As the mobile-based technologies are constantly evolving, more channels may be added in future as the need arises.

• SMS (Short Message Service)
• Mobile applications based on SMS and IP
• IVR (Interactive Voice Response)
• WAP (Wireless Application Protocol)
• USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data)
• CBC (Cell Broadcast)
• SIM Toolkit (STK)/Dynamic STK, 3G-Video
• Others (WiFi/WLAN etc.)

Though m-governance may be seen as an extension of e-governance services, existence of e-governance services is not a prerequisite for deployment of m-governance services. The mobile-based innovative public services to be deployed under the ambit of this framework and implementation strategy are aimed at extending the reach of electronic public services to all citizens, especially those who are unable or unwilling to access public services through internet or those who simply prefer to use mobile devices. Government departments and agencies can directly start providing m-governance services through Mobile Seva though they may not be currently offering any e-governance services.

Government departments and agencies can directly register for Mobile Seva through the eSMS option on the Mobile Seva portal at: https://services.mgov.gov.in/. Please refer to 'Department Services' tab on the Mobile Seva home page for further details. DeitY and C-DAC shall provide all the necessary guidance and assistance to all Government departments and agencies to develop mobile based applications for delivering their services.

The concerned Government departments and agencies will be responsible for creating and updating mobile-ready content for their respective services.

DeitY, C-DAC, or other designated agencies, will undertake awareness creation and capacity building exercises for according greater visibility to the mobile governance initiative amongst various stakeholders and potential beneficiaries across Government, industry, businesses, civil society organisations and citizens.

The SMS Push Service can be used by the Government departments and agencies to send SMS notifications or updates to citizens and businesses. For availing this service, the department / agency needs to have an account with Mobile Seva. This service is available only to government departments and agencies in the country.

Government departments and agencies can register themselves for opening a Push SMS account by filling the registration form available at https://services.mgov.gov.in/registrationForm.jsp. The details provided in the registration form are verified and only on approval, departments and agencies would be able to use this service.

Government departments and agencies whose account has been approved can use Push SMS service by logging on to the Mobile Seva services portal at https://services.mgov.gov.in. They can also use this service programmatically through our APIs. Please refer technical articles and user manual under "Resources" on this Portal for more details.

This service can be used by citizens or businesses to send a request for a service or to obtain status updates on their requests. It can be availed by sending an SMS to the short codes 166 or 51969 or the long code 9223166166. This service can also be availed by department officials for internal applications.

We have two short codes 166 and 51969 and a long code 9223166166 for Pull SMS services. To access Pull SMS services, users need to send an SMS to 166 / 51969 / 9223166166 in the format:- <Keyword> SPACE <Sub-keyword> SPACE <Parameter/argument>. The format of the SMS is illustrated below:

In the above example, the SMS to be sent by the citizen would be "UPSC RESULT 123456". This SMS can be sent to any of the three codes: 166, 51969 or 9223166166. State government services start with the keyword for the state, followed by the sub-keyword which identifies the service and then, the parameter/argument.

IVRS refers to interactive voice response system. Users can dial 166 to access government services. Currently 166 is operational only on TATA, MTNL, Aircel, Videocon and MTS Teleservices. Subscribers from other operators can call 02226209367 / 02267870166 to access government services through our Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS) system. The text response received from departments are converted to voice using Text-to-Speech engine and played to the caller.