“eServices have been launched under “Ramadanyat” corner on the eGovernment Portal (bahrain.bh) and the Mobile Portal (bahrain.bh/mobile) aiming at providing various integrated and unified eServices that are needed by the citizen during Ramadan,” said Mr. Mohammed Ziad Asfour, Assistant Director of Marketing and Awareness of the eGovernment Authority.

He added, “The main objective of creating such corner is to facilitate the information searching for the citizen and save his time and effort, in addition to interact with the community on all occasions.”

Furthermore, “Ramadanyat” corner provides most important eServices that comes in line with the month of Ramadan, and are accessible through different eGovernment channels i.e. eGovernment Portal (bahrain.bh), the Mobile Portal (bahrain.bh/mobile), eServices Centers, eGovernment kiosks, and the National Contact Center (80008001), or through SMS (4949 Batelco, 88311 Zain).

In order to receive a text message with a list of open “majales”, all you have to do is to send a code < Governorate>, for example: MAJ SO WED, and hence, citizen will receive an SMS with a list of the “majales” that are open on Wednesday and located in the South province. The Governorate codes are as follows: Capital (CA), Muharraq (MU), Central (CE), North (NO), South (SO), and the days of the week codes from Saturday to Friday are: (SAT), (SUN), (MON), (TUE), (WED), (THU), (FRI).

Moreover, the Islamic events in the Kingdom can be found on the eGovernment Portal or through SMS by sending the following codes: , for example: when sending SMS with the code RLG 7, you receive a table of the timings of preaching sessions that take place after the “Taraweeh” prayer on that day. You can use the same method by replacing (RLG) with (EMS) to find out the timings of fasting and breaking (Emsak & Iftar) for that day and the day right after.

For more information about “Ramadaniyat” eServices, citizen can browse the eGovernment portal bahrain.bh or the mobile portal Bahrain.bh/mobile or visit the eGovernment stand in the Bahrain City Center which is going to be in service until the half of the holy month of Ramadan. The eGovernment also continue with its interaction with citizen through its Radio contest in the Arabic program “Dahawi Ramadan” which is broadcasted on Radio Bahrain 93.3 FM throughout Sunday to Thursday during Ramadan.

Source: http://www.ameinfo.com/272279.html

The m-governance initiative will benefit residents who have applied for birth and death certificates, water connection, property tax discrepancies, clearing of building plans, etc. as they will no longer need to run to the corporation’s office to check the status of their applications.

Each department has assigned one person to check the status of applications and send the message to the applicants every evening on their mobile numbers, mentioned on the application form. Messages are also being sent to applicants in case additional documents are required.

It will also prevent corruption as people will no longer pay bribes for a quick processing of their applications. The civic body has also installed charge coupled device (CCD) cameras at its single-window counters to keep a check on corruption.

By Anshupriya Jha | 12 August 2011 Source: http://www.futuregov.in/articles/2011/aug/12/ranchi-civic-body-introduces-sms-alerts/

While the subsequent alerts will be free of cost, the first message meant to initiate subscription will be charged. Chennaiites can register themselves by sending an SMS to 09219592195 saying ‘JOIN CTP’. The subscriber will receive a confirmation and then start getting regular traffic updates. To unsubscribe, one will need to send an SMS saying ‘LEAVE CTP’ to the same number.

The alerts are also available at www.smsgupshup.com/groups/ctp. In less than a week after its launch, around 11,000 people have already signed up for the service. Once the number of subscriptions becomes substantial, a traffic alert community will be formed where people will be able to share the traffic status updates in their respective areas.

Mobile phone numbers registered under the Do Not Disturb (DND) service will not receive these alerts.

This system helps people plan their day, save time while travelling and ensure better traffic management.

Other major cities across the country such as Mumbai and Delhi already have such traffic alert system in place.

Source: http://www.futuregov.in/articles/2011/aug/19/chennai-introduces-SMS-alerts-traffic-management/

In a fresh e-Governance initiative, the Uttarakhand government has launched SMS GPF services to help state government employees track status of their General Provident Fund (GPF) accounts at the click of a mouse.

With this, Uttarakhand has become the second state to offer these services after Tamil Nadu. This facility has been jointly launched by the Office of the Comptroller and Auditor General and National Informatics Centre (NIC).

The facility of obtaining GPF information through SMS would benefit around one lakh state government employees of Uttarakhand.

The employees can get details of the monthly deposit, monthly withdrawal, yearly status and opening and closing balance through this new facility.

For availing of the services, the state government employees would have to log on to website and go inside the SMS menu where they can enter their GPF number and register themselves for obtaining the information. The updated information would then be sent to their mobile through the SMS.

According to Uttarakhand Auditor General Praveer Pandey, the SMS GPF services would bring about transparency in governance and enable the employees to know of their GPF accounts at the click of a mouse.

This is also the part of the government’s e- Governance initiative for better administration and employee satisfaction. Around 30,000 mobile numbers have already been registered for these services in the state.

—

Quelle/Source: iGovernment, 10.08.2010

City Council of Nairobi is introduced a Short Code SMS Service where by clients can access balance or information from their phones. You can use the short code 3356 for the following services:

1. RATES:

This option allows for balance query on Rates property(s). To check the balance on your property send SMS to 3356 starting with the word “RATES” followed by the plot number e.g. “RATES 123/456? or “RATES BLOCK 123/456?

2. RENT:

This option allows for tenants to check the balance on their house(s). To check the balance on rent send SMS to 3356 starting with the word “RENT” followed by the house number e.g. “RENT 123/456?

3. City Mortuary:

This option allows for client to check the bill or balance on their deceased person(s) at the City Mortuary. To check the balance send SMS to 3356 starting with the word “MORTUARY” followed by the admission Number e.g. “MORTUARY PLC-123456?

4. Medical Certificate:

This option allows for client to check if their medical certificate is ready. To check medical certificate status send SMS to 3356 starting with the word “MEDICAL” followed by the Lab Number e.g. “MEDICAL 123456?

5. Single Business Permit:

This option allows for businesses to verify their license details. To verify license details send SMS to 3356 starting with the word “SBP” followed by the Business Account number e.g. “SBP 123456?

6. Receipt Confirmation:

This option allows for clients to verify the details of their receipt9s0. To verify receipt details send SMS to 3356 starting with the word “RECEIPT” followed by the receipt number e.g. “Receipt 123456?

(Source: http://misterfix.wordpress.com/2010/03/03/3356-short-codes-self-help-sms-service-by-the-city-council-of-nairobi/)

18 Jan 09:16: Please can someone find some help for my friend 2 children that are alive under their house at 4813 Ruelle Chretien Lalu et Poupla Haiti.

After the earthquake, the text messages came streaming in to 4636. Reports of trapped people, fires, polluted water sources, and requests for food, water and medical supplies. Hundreds of volunteers translated them from Creole and French into English, tagged them with a location and passed them on to aid agencies on the ground. Yet not one of the volunteers was anywhere near Haiti.

The 4636 texting service is part of a new generation of web-based efforts to help disaster relief that has emerged from the revolution in texting, social networking and crowdsourcing. Its impact on the ground is tangible. For example, a Haitian clinic texted 4636 that it was running low on fuel for its generator. Within 20 minutes the Red Cross said it would resupply.

A Haitian clinic texted that it needed fuel for its generator. The Red Cross responded in 20 minutes

4636 is run by a small organisation called Ushahidi.com, originally set up in Kenya to gather reports of violence after the 2008 election. Within days of the earthquake on 12 January that flattened Haiti’s capital Port-au-Prince and numerous surrounding towns, it had set up a Haitian operation and recruited hundreds of volunteers to help translate messages, many of them Haitians living in the US. The service is free, courtesy of Digicell, Haiti’s largest mobile network operator, which had 70 per cent of its network running within 24 hours of the quake.

Nicolas di Tada, arrived in Haiti soon after the disaster working for Innovative Support to Emergencies Diseases and Disasters (InSTEDD), a nonprofit organisation which looks for ways that technology can help in this kind of scenario. He helped set up 4636 but says that was the easy part. “The challenge was making responders on the ground aware of us.” A stroke of luck made a big difference. One of the first texts was from a hospital which had 200 beds, and doctors, nurses and medical supplies on standby, but no patients, because hardly any relief agencies knew they were there. Forwarding that message on told a large number of organisations about 4636. Now, radio stations help spread the word.

As people generally don’t send messages to say their request has been fulfilled, Ushahidi has no way of knowing how successful it has been. Still, “the system is unprecedented”, says Christopher Csikszentmihalyi, director of the Center for Future Civic Media at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Other initiatives have harnessed the power and multitude of web users. CrisisCommons has organised thousands of volunteers to improve the map of Haiti available on the open-source site OpenStreetMap. When the disaster struck, the map showed little more than three main roads and a small network of smaller roads. The volunteers used a host of sources, such as satellite images and information from people on the ground, and ended up constructing the most detailed map available, showing the position of hospitals, triage centres and displacement camps.

Government agencies are printing the maps to hand out in the field, and uploading them to mobile GPS units. “The OpenStreetMaps have been our most important resource,” says Robert Munro, a 4636 volunteer and a linguist at Stanford University, California, who analyses the role that text messages play in the developing world. Ushahidi volunteers use them to pinpoint with an accuracy of a few metres the location of 4636 texters.

Specialist volunteers have also been recruited to analyse satellite pictures. ImageCat, a company based in Los Angeles, is being funded by the World Bank to assess the damage – a job that usually takes weeks or months. The firm divided before and after images released by remote-sensing satellite operators into 500-square-metre areas and distributed them to dozens of specialists at universities in the UK, US and Europe. Within a few days, they had identified every collapsed building in Port-au-Prince, around 5000 in total.

The World Bank is using the information to assess the cost of rebuilding in the region. The volunteers are now working on a higher resolution aerial survey carried out last week to categorise the scale of damage to each building.

CrisisCommons is behind many other projects, including one to build a Craig’s List-style “we need, we have” website to link people offering resources to those that need them, and an online database to monitor the capacity of hospitals in real time.

One project has built an online database to monitor the capacity of hospitals in real time

Most impressive of all is that the projects are the result of requests from responders on the ground. That’s crucial, says Vinay Gupta, an energy policy analyst and CrisisCommons volunteer in London. CrisisCommons operates around a wiki page where people and organisations in Haiti post their needs. Requests are picked up by volunteers who answer them according to their skills.

A number of factors have come together to make this a defining moment for the web. One of the most important, says Munro, is the spread of mobile communications infrastructure to the developing world, reflected in the fact that much communication in poorer countries is now by text. New tools for using data transmitted in text messages have emerged in developing countries, run by relatively small companies like Ushahidi. These organisations are able to work quickly using limited resources in difficult conditions, making them well-placed to assist in disaster relief.

Then there’s the social media revolution that allows crowdsourcing to take place. The translators on 4636, most of whom have never met, are continually asking each other’s advice in a chatroom. Twitter has played a big role in relaying news, and many aid agencies log their activities on Facebook. But most of all, it is the knowledge that large-scale activities can be coordinated through online networks that has given individuals and organisations the confidence to collaborate in this way.

None of this is to say that online collaboration has solved the problems of disaster relief. Aid agencies still have a hugely difficult job to do on the ground. Web-based networks cannot fly in food, medicine, fuel and trucks, or drive the supplies around Haiti. What they can provide is a new layer of support. “The truth is that it’s not possible to know how effective we’ve been,” says di Tada. “That’s something we’ll have to work out later.”

(Source:  http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20527453.600-how-crowdsourcing-is-helping-in-haiti.html?full=true    27 January 2010 by Justin Mullins)

The Sandora Prototype 1.0 is a tracking system which sends live timetable information and a Google Map showing the location of the vehicle, direct to mobile phones by SMS. Commuters can obtain the information either before their trip or while waiting at a stop.

The system works by placing a GPS-enabled device on a bus, train or tram. The device sends regular information about its location to a server. This information is then compared with the original static timetable to calculate its arrival time at a particular stop.

“Sandora is an easy-to-set-up cost-effective, time management tool that will reduce waiting time by providing live information for users of transport services. It can be accessed via mobile phones or the internet at little or no cost to the user,” says Phil Allan, Sandora’s team leader.

The system, which utilises existing technologies and minimal hardware, may prove useful for densely populated countries like India, expected to have some 492 million mobile phone users by the year-end.

“Waiting for a bus in India’s metropolitan cities is often a frustrating experience for the millions of people who use it and managing traffic is one of the biggest challenges. With Sandora, commuters can expect a service that will make their travelling to work more convenient and possibly quicker,” says Akhilesh Harsh, one of the Master of Science in Information Technology students who have created the system.

“As New Delhi gears up to host the 2010 Commonwealth Games, public or private companies would benefit in managing the city’s traffic if they choose to implement the Sandora system. Having a world class traffic management system will also reduce the number of cars clogging the roads,” Harsh, who migrated to Australia in 1994 from Bikaner (Rajasthan) and now works for the South Australian government as a data warehouse systems administrator, told IANS.

A successful prototype of the service has been recently tested on the Adelaide Connector bus service. The prototype uses SMS messages to send location information. However, future versions of Sandora will send this data either as TCP/IP data packets over the 3G Network or via a URL connection.

Dave Hepworth, another member of the team, told IANS: “Sandora is not designed to make the bus run on time, but at least you know how long it is until the next one arrives. Our slogan is ‘Never miss your bus again’. ”

Sandora can also be configured to provide other information such as interruptions to services, alternative transport services and disability access. “It can also monitor school buses and taxi locations. One of our main objectives is to encourage people to use mobile as a productivity tool rather than just a personal communication tool,” says the project’s supervisor, Associate Professor Riaz Esmailzadeh.

The system has many environmental and economic benefits. It will encourage people to use public transport rather than private vehicles as they will be able to make better informed and timely choices, which would in turn lead to reduction in emissions and noise pollution.

“More use of public transport will generate revenue for transport authorities, and may actually drive the reduction of ticket costs and create savings for households,” says Anne Sy, a student from the Philippines.
Read more: http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/sci-tech/when-will-your-bus-arrive-know-it-on-your-mobile_100264914.html#ixzz0aTfH0eHV

Planned services include:

• Subscription to SMS services:
  • Reminder/cancellation of appointments with the city’s Municipal Tax Office
  • City-Council alerts on citizens’ tax overpayments
  • Status alerts for an appeal against or declaration of a fine
• SMS services now available:
  • Residency certificate applications
  • Checking availability of Bicing stations
  • Consulting polling stations
  • Barcelona Wi-Fi hot spots
• iPhone applications: iBicing
• SMS alerts for status changes in online procedures

What does it do?

These mobile applications extend Barcelona City Council’s range of services and are adapted to the new tools used daily by the public, through which users gain access, from any location, to procedures they may have to carry out or information they may need to receive.

These are new added-value services for city residents, to boost this mobile platform.

Currently available by texting to 7010.

Did you know that..?

• You can use any mobile telephone to carry out administrative procedures and receive information from the City Council

• There are applications available for iPhones and for SMS and WAP services

(Source: http://w3.bcn.cat/egovernment/en/barcelona_productes_mobils.html)

THE federal government has selected Telstra to build a new $15 million national warning system that will send text alerts to the mobile phones of residents threatened by bushfires.

Telstra will deliver the National Emergency Warning System (NEWS) after beating rival Optus in a competitive tender process led by the Victorian government.

In the event of a disaster such as Black Saturday, the system will be used to deliver recorded voice warnings to landlines and text messages to mobiles based on people’s billing addresses.

It’s hoped the system, which will be able to send at least 100,000 messages at a time, will be in use by the end of November in all states except Western Australia, which has its own State Alert system.

“This system will provide emergency service authorities with another way to warn communities in the event of an emergency and in Victoria will complement the actions our government is taking to better protect Victorians from bushfires,” said Victoria’s Police and Emergency Services Minister, Bob Cameron.

“Experts predict this fire season could be potentially worse than the season we’ve just experienced and Victoria led the delivery of the new national-based system because we wanted a system in place for this fire season that could alert communities in the event of a life-threatening emergency.”

Tender documents for the warning system say it could also be used during disease epidemics, sieges, cyclones, terrorist attacks, locust plagues and heat or smog alerts.

“The system will alert communities to emergencies via a recorded voice message on telephones and a text message on mobiles based on the subscribers’ billing address,” Mr Cameron said.

In addition to warning people, the technology could also one day be used to help locate survivors in the aftermath of a fire.

The Victorian government, in partnership with the commonwealth , is exploring the possibility of using the system to deliver warnings to mobile phones based on the physical location of a handset at the time of the emergency.

The possibility of enhancing the system so it can use location-based technology to track citizens in times of emergency has led civil liberties groups to warn of a need for tight privacy guidelines, but the government said it has already moved to assuage such concerns.

Emergency Services Commissioner Bruce Esplin said legislative amendments had been made to impose controls against potential misuse of sensitive personal information.

“States and Territories will use the warning system when appropriate and will determine which geographic area to warn, when to warn and at what time the warning is sent. At no stage will States or Territories have access to the customer name details of the telephone number,” Mr Esplin said.

“This arrangement between the Commonwealth and the States and Territories works to safeguard the public’s personal privacy and their personal safety in potential emergency situations.”

Telstra chief executive David Thodey said the telco was well placed to develop and build the emergency system.

“Telstra is extremely proud that our technology will be used to assist emergency service organisations by delivering warnings to communities through the telephone system,” he said.

Following the Council of Australian Governments decision in April to develop the system, it was agreed that Victoria would lead the procurement and implementation process. Up to $15 million has been allocated to the project.

Source: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/australian-it/telstra-sms-alerts-could-save-lives/story-e6frgamf-1225779433569