The government is in the process of launching mobile governance facility for various public utility services, Information Technology Minister Poongothai Aladi Aruna said here on Wednesday.
Inaugurating a Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) summit on ‘Knowledge Management, Innovation and Enterprise,’ Dr. Poongothai said mobile governance innovations in select sectors had gained public acceptance and would be launched full-fledged shortly. The Centre had allotted Rs.12 crore for the m-governance project.
Dr. Poongothai pointed out that mobile governance had been introduced in the public distribution sector to enable the public to know through a text message data on the food stocks available at the local ration shop. Taluk supply officers had been given handsets to facilitate easy access for the public.
The Health Department had launched vaccination reminder alerts on mobile handsets provided to an estimated 10,000 village health nurses. Though a simple measure, the reminders could contribute to reducing infant/maternal mortality rates, Dr. Poongothai said.
Mobile governance on various utility platforms, such as telephone bill payment or property tax remittance, would seek to leverage the revolution in mobile telephony. While the subscriber base was increasing by 8 million users a month in the country, mobile phone penetration in Tamil Nadu was 67 per cent and almost 110 per cent in Chennai, Dr. Poongothai said.
In his keynote address on the ‘Future of Knowledge Management,’ Ashok Soota, chairman, CII Mission on Knowledge, said knowledge management (KM) will change the way the future of work changes — to be more collaborative, more virtual and more innovative.
Technology and process-centric approaches to KM will give way to social and people-centric views to facilitate collaboration alongside a proliferation of open source movements. Knowledge systems will become more proactive and incorporate organised experience and learning, Mr. Soota said.
The CII Mission has established platforms to bring together people from academia, the public sector and corporations to discuss the most recent trends in KM. Apart from establishing networks of KM practitioners in key cities, CII has also provided support to Bar Camp and ‘unconference’ movements, he said. S. Sadagopan, Director, IIIT- Bangalore, said knowledge was the invaluable resource that provided the link between industry and academia. Importantly, knowledge multiplied when it was shared and diminished when it was not, he said. C. R. Swaminathan, chairman CII -Southern Region, spoke.
