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As part of our Mobile Government special coverage with the World Bank, we highlight views of Rain Rannu who has been actively involved in implementing mGovernment in Estonia.

This interview was conducted by eGovMonitor and World Bank's e-Development Thematic Group as part of the joint special coverage on Mobile Government in conjunction with the Global Dialogue videoconference organized by e-Development Thematic Group and other partners on Nov.29, 2007.

Q1.  Is the deployment of mobile technologies to deliver services following the same principles of eGovernment delivery in Estonia? Can you give us a brief overview of the state of play of mobile government in Estonia currently?

Yes and no - in some ways the state is trying to follow the same principles for m-government, in some ways it is not. For example, there is very little co-operation between Estonian cities and regions in terms of m-services. If a successful service is launched in one city, it is not very likely to extend to other cities or to a national level. Each city starts from scratch. There are a lot of cool m-services in Tartu (like m-teacher, m-library, m-neighbourhoodwatch, etc), some in Tallinn, but not so many in other cities.

A good initiative on the national level, that is actually just being launched, is a platform, where every government agency can set up their own SMS-notification service. This platform was built on top of the existing eServices platform. With this new platform, every agency can set up their own service without having to develop it from scratch. The awareness about this new platform among agencies is not very big yet, but I predict it is going to be widely used in the coming years.

Q2. How difficult was the evolutionary process from internet based government services to mobile Government services? Where did you find the primary bottlenecks to come from and how did you overcome them?

Mobiles have some advantages over computers - more people have mobiles than computer and mobiles are always on, always with us. But there are limitations - small screen, small keyboard, slower and more expensive data connection. This means that m-government is not likely to replace e-government. It just adds value in places, where "e" cannot reach. People will never fill in tax declarations over mobile (they will always use internet for this), but they would prefer to receive catastrophy-alerts via SMS than via e-mail.

For us, once the governments have realized this distinction, it has made getting our m-service ideas approved and implemented much easier, because the governments do not want to wait with m-services until "all the e-services are completed".

Q3. What benefits have mobile government services brought to Estonian citizens as well as the public sector in terms of efficiency and effectiveness  of service delivery?

A great example is a service where national exam results are delivered to high-school students via SMS. It was first launched in 2005 and now, in 2007, more than 2/3 of all the exam results were delivered this way.

This service is a good example because before that, exam results were delivered to schools on paper and students had to come to school (in the summer-time) to see the results. But the tricky part was that no-one knew exactly when the results would arrive. And students - whose university access and future was to be determined by these results - were impatient, and called uo the schools up all the time. So during the results period, school secretaries could not do much else than answer the calls from the students. SMS-notifications changed that. Now the results arrive via SMS 2 days earlier than on paper. And schools have far less calls from students.

Similar improvements of efficiency, and especially effectiveness, are present in several services.  

Q4. One of Estonia?s key achievements have been the Citizen?s IT environment and how is this helping the evolution from eServices to mServices? Could you highlight the approach you have taken to support this evolution.

The concept of the "citizen portal" and a way for citizens to access all their eServices from one single source is a great achievement, which also helps the creation of m-services. For example, citizens can go to the portal and link their account and their mobile phone number, after which the state (and different agencies) can start delivering SMS-based services to these peoole. Examples of such services are SMS-notifications, such as exam results, or notifications when your passport or drivers licence is ready (or about to expire) and so on.

Q5. Where do you see Estonia in terms of mobile technology enabled services in 5 years time and what insights and suggestions would you have for your  colleagues in other countries?

In my mind, we will see a whole lot more of mServices in 5 years, because mobiles have some big benefits as compared to computers (more users, always with us). Hopefully, Estonia will remain to be one of the places in the world where some of the most innovative m-services are made. As for suggestions to other countries (cities, regions, etc), in our experience is that successful services do not always require much planning and money, but can be often created with short time and low budgets. Successful implementations follow the formula of first looking into the local needs and best practices around the world, then creating a small-scale pilot project, and only then, when the pilot is successful, devoting more resources to extending the reach of the successful pilot projects.