The Mobile Governance Project of Kerala State IT Mission, department of Information Technology , Government of Kerala, christened “Em-power Kerala” which was in the news recently for bagging International award has won the mBillionth South Asian Award 2011 under the Mobile Governance Category. It was selected from over 200 nominations filed from 8 South Asian Countries. mBillionth Award is an award instituted by Digital Empowerment Foundation and Supported by Department of Information Technology, New Delhi, and National Internet Exchange of India. The mBillionth Award 2011 is instituted to honour excellence in mobile and telecom innovations, key innovative applications, services, innovations, etc., in arena of mobile technology and applications that have helped connect the rural masses and the wider communities with the external world across South Asia.

Sri Sabarish.K, Mission Coordinator, Kerala State IT Mission did a technical presentation at the Conference on June 23^rd 2011 at New Delhi and received the Award. The award was given for “designing and setting up a comprehensive Mobile Service Delivery Platform for integrating mobiles in state wide Governance applications and services of Kerala State Government”, which could enable swift and seamless roll-out of over 50 Mobile Governance services in the State.

The Model was earlier hailed as one of the best suited and replicable models for the developing nations by The World Bank and was recommended by them for adoption across the globe due to cost effectiveness and efficiency. The same architecture has now been adopted by Department of Information Technology, New Delhi, for powering the mobile governance initiatives under National e-governance Plan (NeGP).