From eGovernment to mGovernment

For a long time I have wondered how the governments in the developing world are going about developing eGovernment.

In South Africa fewer of 10% of the people of the country have access to computers and the knowledge to use these computers. Whereas the current generation of children are learning computers in school throughout the country, it will be another 10 years before they are adults and needing to communicate with governments at all levels.

Government has started to realise that the mobile phone is the ideal vehicle for communicating with its citizens, since most people, even in the most impoverished areas of the country, have access to mobile phones, and there is an increasing usage of more powerful phones which have Internet access.

This is a shift into "mGovernment" or Mobile-Government, in which government can talk and listen to its citizens using their mobile phones.

Fortunately, we anticipated this around 4 years ago and started to develop our XtownX eGovernment component.