Transcending e-Government: a Case of Mobile Government in Beijing

The convergence of mobile communication and mobile computing technologies opens up new horizon for mobile interaction and mobile working. The use of mobile technology in government sector not only provides an alternative channel of communication and public service delivery, but more importantly, it can address the mobility of government itself and in this way transcend the traditional e-government service delivery model by bring personalized, localized and context aware services close to its mobile citizens. A number of mobile government initiatives have been proposed globally to take advantage of this opportunity for better public service delivery. In this paper an example of such a mobile government initiative in a district of Beijing is presented. Based on the study this paper argues for a further paradigm shift from e-government to mobile government. With the challenges and opportunities provided by mobile ICT, government should be aware of the potential of mobile government to transcend the traditional e-government models, which pay undue attention to online Internet portals.

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