Asian countries have great potential for the use of m-technology. By March 2007, there were 1. 1 billion mobile subscribers in this region. The industrialized countries, such as Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore, have some of the highest penetration rates of mobile phones in the world. Therefore, governments in these countries have implemented various m-government projects.

Japan is one of the leaders in mobile and wireless technology. The number of third-generation (3G) mobile phone users is the highest in the world, making Japan the world leader in the percentage of mobile phones supporting Internet access ( 94.1%)

[ 2]. However, m-government in Japan is not as widespread as in other developed countries. Deployed m-government applications have been related to tasks that are not legally binding, such as information on tourism, disaster prevention, and child rearing.

The Vehicle Information and ^{SIM ID} Communication System (VICS) project provides information to and collects information from vehicles so that citizens can receive timely information services such as traffic congestion, road work, car accidents, availability of parking lots, and weather information.

The Japanese government considers m-government a somewhat old-fashioned term and is striving toward u(ubiquitous)-Japan to connect everyone and everything, anytime, anywhere.

In Korea, a project called “M-police” was implemented to assist police officers in capturing suspects and finding missing cars. The project enables the officers to retrieve detailed information on missing vehicles, driver’s licenses, vehicles’ histories, and pictures of suspects by using mobile devices. In Anyang City, parking inspectors collect parking information and print receipts on the spot using PDAs and small printers. The m-local tax management system, introduced in the cities of Uijeongbu and Kunsan, enables officers to access information on car taxes, obtain data on delinquent taxes, and immediately transfer data to the local tax database [ 3].

SMS has been widely used in many Asian countries. At the height of the SARS health scare in 2004, the Hong Kong government sent text messages to six million mobile phone users in an effort to calm citizens who were frightened by rumors. Singapore gov-

ernment agencies send citizens text messages such as parking ticket reminders, national service obligations, and passport renewal notifications. Table 3 lists and summarizes sample m-government applications in Asia.

 

CHALLENGES AND ISSUES IN M-GOVERNMENT Despite the great potential and positive expectations, m-government is still in its earliest stage of development and its applications are limited. Governments are proceeding with caution to m-government appli-

 

Applications

SMS alerting services

Mobile tracking systems

Government Agencies

London Police Departments

Metroline, London

G2C (Government- SMS for job to-Citizen) posting

Sweden

Description

- Inform citizens about security threats and emergency alerts

- Track London buses using mobile communication systems

- Send messages to control traffic flow.

- Provide job posting for temporary workers via SMS

MapMate

Mobile parking fee payment

Sweden

Sweden

- Wireless map systems

- Allow citizens to pay parking fee through mobile devices

Finland

Tracking suspects IEE (Internal

Efficiency and

Effectiveness) M-parking

German Police

- ID cards that serve as an official travel document as a passport does

- Use GPS and mobile phones to track suspects’ movements

Austria law enforcement

- Use handheld devices to connect to central database to monitor parking

Table 2. Examples of m-government applications in Europe.

cations due to issues, risks, and concerns inherited from e-government and some specific to m-technologies. Some of the challenges related to e-government include:

• Improving interoperability and integration since the public sector is legacy-system driven, not process-oriented driven. A radical reengineering of processes and supporting information systems is required that demands many technical, semantic, organizational, and managerial changes.

• Governments are not very receptive to private and public service providers who may contribute to innovative electronic service delivery.

• Many governments lack necessary incentives and institutional structures to realize the full potential of electronic service delivery. For less-developed countries, e-government is either nonexistent or very limited in scope. For example, China currently has more than 465 million mobile phone users, yet its m-government practices are still at the embryonic stage because of the inadequate e-government infrastructure.

M-government also faces some challenges that are unique to m-technologies. Security and privacy are considered to be the major obstacles for m-govern-