Project description

One of the potential benefits of mobile e-government is "to take the services to the citizens" instead of expecting citizens to go to the services. The project "mobile citizen services" aimed at offering a broad range of services (passports, wage tax cards, driving licenses, etc.) by means of a mobile one-stop office of citizen services. The mobile office was developed and tested together with a software company and various local administrations in the city of Berlin as pilot users.Fraunhofer HHI was responsible--among other things--for the user requirements analysis, the data collection and analysis during the field trial, the usability of services and terminals and the provision of a secure data infrastructure.

Within the course of a one year lasting pilot trial more than 2,000 citizens used the mobile service. The results of the data collection (questionnaires and interviews) show that citizens regard the service as being useful and highly citizen-friendly.

The system is now applicable as an all-purpose system for wireless citizen services. Among other things, its employment is expected as being particularly beneficial in sparsely populated regions (e.g. rural areas) and/or locations with no stationary telecommunications network (e.g. developing countries).

Due to the achievements of the project, mobile citizen services are on the verge of becoming a regular service in Berlin.

At the beginning of 2005, an SMS queue management system was tested, by means of which citizens can inform themselves about how many people are waiting at a particular site. If requested, they can get an SMS text message notifying them that they are next in the queue.

Project data

Supported by: Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft und Arbeit
Project period: 01.10.2002 - 28.02.2005

Project partners