M-government: Opportunities and Challenges to Deliver Mobile Government Services in Developing Countries

Mobile Government (m-Government) is the use of mobile technologies within the government administration to deliver public services to citizens and firms. It is quickly emerging as the new frontier of service delivery, and transforming government by making public services more accessible to citizens. Governments in developing countries are increasingly making efforts to provide more access to information and services for citizens, businesses, and civil servants through wireless devices. However, providing strategically high impact m-services is beset with numerous challenges- complexity of different mobile technologies, creating secured networks to deliver reliable service, and identifying the types of services that can be easily provided on mobile devices. The scope of this study, therefore, is to identify and discuss some of the challenges as well as the opportunities for improving government performance. The objectives of this paper are, to discuss the main challenges and opportunities of m-government and to identify m-services that m-Government initiatives present for developing countries.