IfG.CC - The Potsdam eGovernment Competence Center

E-commerce and m-commerce in general continue to rise and rise around the world. Other trends closely linked to this such as e-health and e-government initiatives also continue to gather pace. However, there is a divide occurring with some of the poorest nations around the world still unable to access suitable digital infrastructure to access such services.

This report provides a comprehensive overview of trends and developments for the Global Digital Economy in terms of the Sharing Economy, E-commerce, E-health, E-education and E-government. The report analyses the key trends occurring in these sectors, supported by statistics and examples.

The SMS format of communication seems so simple that one may wonder if it offers any scope for innovation.

When I pose this as a question to John McDonough, CEO and Founder, Shorthand Mobile, US (www.shorthandmobile.in), his response is immediate. “There is plenty of room for innovation!” avers McDonough, during an early morning interaction with eWorld in Nageswara Rao park.

The m-governance initiative uses mobile phones with near-field communication, a strip printer and a biometric fingerprint scanner to create bank accounts for rural people and enable them to receive payments. An additional requirement, is the cash box, which contains the cash to be disbursed. The technology was created by A Little World (ALW), sister company of ZMF. “The idea is to run a small bank in a village, without the hassles and costs of having to open an actual branch,” Anurag Gupta, chairman and CTO, ALW and president, ZMF told Financial Chronicle.

"From health to education, mobile technology is changing the way all sectors of society do business," Pule said at the Second e-Skills Summit 2012 and Global ICT Forum on Human Capital Development in Cape Town this week.

Pule said a recent PricewaterhouseCoopers survey indicated that South Africa and Kenya were leading in mobile health deployments on the continent.

In den meisten Regionen der Welt beginnt das Shopping im Netz mit dem Aufruf des gewünschten Online-Ladens in einem Internet-Browser oder dem Eintippen des Namens ersehnter Produkte in eine Suchmaschine. Menschen aus Ländern, in denen Internet-PCs eine Seltenheit sind, müssen dementsprechend draußen bleiben. Das Start-up Slimtrader aus dem amerikanischen Seattle will nun auch diese Märkte mit digitalen Einkaufsmöglichkeiten beglücken: mit Online-Shopping per SMS.

Near Field Communication (NFC) is a short-range, high-frequency wireless communication technology that enables the exchange of data between devices.

While almost half have access to mobile internet technology, less than a third actually use it, as per the Mobile Portal online Survey.

The survey aimed to estimate the ability and willingness of people to use mobile internet in order to allow users to access information and carry out transactions instantly via handheld wireless devices.

Local authorities are migrating their services online as part of a national strategy to provide an ‘e-government’ touchpoint for constituents, with many providing mobile internet services through WAP portals. Transactional mobile applications are seen as the next step, providing another avenue for constituents to monitor and settle council payments. Local authorities looking to deploy these payment services need first to put in place the type of security procedures adopted by the commercial sector.

With consumers in Asia and Europe already using their mobile phones to pay for soda and parking fees, the long-discussed concept of the wireless wallet could be slowly creeping closer to reality in the U.S.