A global network of people using mobile technology for social impact.
This paper identifies the factors that determine citizens’ acceptance of SMS-based e-government services. It reports on a web-based survey, paper-based questionnaires, and phone-call interviews that collected 159 responses from 25 countries. The results indicate that there are fifteen perceptions toward using SMS-based e-government services that may influence citizens to use or to reject the services:
Whether or not a citizen adopts an SMS-based e-government service is influenced by these perceptions. To increase the acceptance of SMS-based e-government services, the systems should address all of these belief factors. An intensive advertising campaign for the services in all mass media channels is critically important to make citizens aware of and to provide detailed knowledge about the services. The advertising campaign should involve people who influence individuals’ decision making. These people include friends, family, teachers, experts, public figures, and government officials. This study found that Notification services are the most frequently used followed by Pull SMS, Listen, and Transaction SMS services. Notification services could be an appropriate starting point for governments who want to establish SMS-based e-government services.
This article explores the practice of ‘‘beeping’’ or ‘‘missed calling’’ between mobile phone users, or calling a number and hanging up before the mobile’s owner can pick up the call. Most beeps are requests to call back immediately, but they can also send a prenegotiated instrumental message such as ‘‘pick me up now’’ or a relational sign, such as ‘‘I’m thinking of you.’’ The practice itself is old, with roots in landline behaviors, but it has grown tremendously, particularly in the developing world.
Based on interviews with small business owners and university students in Rwanda, the article identifies three kinds of beeps (callback, pre-negotiated instrumental, and relational) and the norms governing their use. It then assesses the significance of the practice using adaptive structuration theory. In concluding, the article contrasts beeping with SMS/text messaging, discusses its implications for increasing access to telecommunications services, and suggests paths for future research.
Text messaging has become a popular form of communication with mobile phones worldwide. We present findings from a large scale text messaging study of 70 university students in the United States. We collected almost 60, 000 text messages over a period of 4 months using a custom logging tool on our participants’ phones. Our results suggest that students communicate with a large number of contacts for extended periods of time, engage in simultaneous conversations with as many as 9 contacts, and often use text messaging as a method to switch between a variety of communication mediums. We also explore the content of text messages, and ways text message habits have changed over the last decade as it has become more popular. Finally, we offer design suggestions for future mobile communication tools.
Based on two experiences using mobile phones in Africa to address women’s rights and social development, the author tries to understand whether mobile technology will bring social progress to the economically poor of Africa.
The author first examines mobile phone use in the campaign for the Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa, adopted by the African Union (AU)in 2003 and in need of ratification by 15 countries. The technical barriers to message transmission in the campaign and the message spamming that it attracted inhibited the success of this particular application of mobile technology but did not reduce the campaign effectiveness because the uniqueness of the cell phone campaign strategy drew a large amount of publicity for ratification.
In the second example, the UmNyango Project intended to promote and protect the rights of rural women in the province of KwaZulu Natal (KZN), South Africa, from domestic violence against women and landlessness amongst women. The project created "an SMS gateway through which messages could be distributed to all those enrolled in the project, and it enabled every individual to send messages to the organisers and to the local paralegal officers where they needed assistance with regard to any incidence of violence or threat to their access to land....In practice, the project found SMS to be prohibitively expensive, despite the fact that some level of subsidy was provided by the project towards the cost of SMS." The author states that, "Mobile phones, after all the hype, are like pencils, tools for communication.... Like all technologies, tools do not themselves do anything." He uses the example of SMS hate mail messages to support the position that effects of technology result from the underlying values and morals of its developers, not from the tools themselves, and concludes: "In capitalist societies, all technologies have the potential for magnifying and amplifying social differentiation. It is only through the imposition of the democratic will of citizens can this inherent tendency of technologies be overcome."
Mobile telephony has emerged as the new frontier where governments around the world are making themselves more accessible through the remote delivery of government services and faster rate of data transfer. In developing countries, the lower cost of mobile technology as compared to Internet has allowed for the expansion of mobile government or m-government services to the poorer segments of the population. From a literature review on m-government, including the various strategies required and successive practices across the world, we build five parameters for a framework for evaluation of m-government services. These include Infrastructural Investment, Regulatory and Political environment, Awareness and Acceptance, Security and Privacy, and Equitable Acceptance.
Using these factors, we review the m-government initiatives in selected countries both in the West, Asia and India. This paper provides an updated review of the current mobile government initiatives, including: m-government’s facilitation of development; the issues and challenges in India; and, finally, proposes some strategies that can be adopted by India.
The GMSA reports that the mobile subscriptions worldwide is at 3 billion (2008) with 270 million subscriptions in Africa at the end of 2007. This policy paper considers the challenges faced by public policy makers in understanding the true number of individuals with mobile access. There are many reasons why customers might have more than one phone, phone number or SIM card, which results in the double-counting of customers. As a result, it is difficult to assume that the number telephone numbers or SIM cards translates into individual customers. The author discusses the issue of ambiguity in the estimates of mobile teledensity as an indicator for the MDGs and the subsequent challenge for public policy makers in interpreting the large numbers and how they reflect the reality of their countries, cities, towns and villages. Case studies in Bulgaria and South Africa are presented.
The M-Governance project in Kerala, is a comprehensive Mobile Governance project covering ninety odd Government Departments. The objective of the project is to integrate the advancements in mobile technology with various Government departments with an aim to create cost effective, efficient and round the clock Government information systems. The three channels of mobile communication (Voice, Signalling and Data) and a wide range of technologies (Voice Applications, Applications using signalling channel and data service based Applications ) are being used for this purpose. A comprehensive and integrated Service Delivery Platform is being created to roll out the various services and the M-Governance strategy is being formulated.
This paper examines the approach adopted to identify services and design solutions, wherein the primary focus has been to leverage the existing networks and available wireless technologies. The core platforms being used for M-Governance are based entirely on Open Source Technologies.
The paper also tries to present the various challenges faced while trying to implement M-Governance, and the solutions deviced to address some of those challenges, with relevant case studies. The Service Delivery models for various M-Governance Services, some of which have already been frozen, and others that are being considered are also being discussed. The paper also tries to examine the strategy adopted for deployment of these services.
SMS or text messaging is a feature available on all mobile phones which allows a small amount of text to be sent between one user and another. Text messaging has become increasingly popular in recent years, particularly among youth, and it is being adopted by non-profit organizations as a communications channel.
This “quick start” guide is intended to demystify SMS and help get you set up to using text messaging in your work in the shortest possible time. The guide is not intended to serve as a comprehensive look at the use of SMS, but rather provides a short overview of SMS considerations and an introduction into how it works.
This document aims to help readers understand the current challenges of deploying development-oriented services on mobile phones, evaluate existing technologies, and identify the most promising directions to lower the barriers of developing, deploying and accessing services on mobile phones and thereby creating an enabling environment for more social-oriented services to appear.
This document is divided into two major parts. The first part presents the major challenges today for both developing and accessing mobile services, potential ways to bridge them with existing tools, technologies and infrastructure, and potential research directions to follow to provide a more comprehensive resolution or solution. The second part focuses on presenting the major technologies and the major options existing today to deploy content and applications on mobile phones. For each of these technologies, the document presents a short analysis of the technology's potential and the requirements in terms of infrastructure, devices, targeted end-users, and costs associated with implementation and delivery.
The Helsinki Commission is an organization monitoring the implementation of the Helsinki Accords, the Helsinki Final Act across 56 participating states. The Commission monitors freedom of media. This briefing considers the ways in which new media and Internet communication technologies affect the balance of power between human rights activists and authoritarian governments. Panelists focus on new media’s role in protests and elections, the ways in which it empowers civil society activists, and the darker side: how dictators use new technology to control and repress their citizens.
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phlebotomistd37
Macmillan South Africa
SMS Media