question_answer

Direction: Read the following passage carefully and answer the questions that follow.

The Department of Information Technology (DIT) on 5 April 2011 published a draft policy on mobile governance. The draft policy on mobile governance is aimed at enabling the government departments to provide services, including payment of utility bills and filing of tax returns from mobile phones.

According to the draft policy, a platform called Mobile Service Delivery Gateway (MSDG) will be set up, on which all ministries and departments will be able to start their services. MSDG is expected to be developed by September 2011 and link projects that have already been digitised, such as filing of income taxes, by December 2010.

TRAI mentioned that there were about 80 million Internet users in India while the number of mobile phone subscribers was around 771 million at the end of January 2011. The relevance of the mobile platform as a medium was thus felt for delivery of public services. The policy will also lay down the framework for a common payment gateway and ensure that all government departments follow the same standards.

Also the application providers will be encouraged to adopt these standards to ensure the inter-operability of the applications across various systems and devices to the extent practicable. DIT has also proposed to set up an innovation fund to provide funds to third-party developers in order to build software applications on the gateway.

The aim of the draft policy on mobile governance is:

A)  To allow payment of utility bills only

B)  To enable government departments in providing services

C)  To file tax returns by mobile phone users

D)  To provide various services to the customers

E)  None of these