One-stop-shop portals for women-directed services: One-stop-shop portals facilitate the aggregation of public information and services from a wide range of departments and agencies into a single web space (UNDESA 2016)4. Currently, out of the 193 countries covered by the UN E-government Survey, over 90 countries have set up one-stop-shop portals. But there are only very few instances of such one-stop-shop portals being customised by country governments for women-directed e-service delivery, and some examples are discussed below.

In Kutch district of Gujarat state, India, a local CSO – Kutch Mahila Vikas Sangathan – has developed a one-stop-shop portal, in partnership with district level government agencies, to support the work of one-stop-shop kiosks for convergent public service delivery to marginalised women from tribal communities, engaged in artisanal and dairy occupations. The portal is intended to serve as a resource for information workers/ infomediaries who process information and service delivery requests at the last mile. As these workers may themselves have low levels of textual literacy and digital literacy, the interface uses icons and visual graphics to aid ease of navigation. Information about different services has been organised using a ‘target group’ logic that is user-facing rather than a ‘departmental’ logic that is government- or system-facing. See Figure 1 below.

Figure 1. Landing page of the one-stop-shop portal (Panjo Haq) developed by the Kutch Mahila Vikas Sangathan

Stand-alone web portals for specialised services: In Europe, the region with the highest number of countries offering targeted e-services to women (23), national governments have opted to set up a range of smaller portals offering specialised services rather than a single one-stop-shop portal. As early as 2010, EU member states such as Germany and Austria had set up independent portals to promote awareness on gender equality, and provide information about women-directed services (UNDESA 2010)7.

Australia, too, is witness to this trend of departments/ agencies launching their own smaller portals/ “portlets” (UN ) for specialised services – of which WONNSW.com.au, an initiative of the Department of Industry, New South Wales, is especially noteworthy. This portal seeks to be a single point of information about resources and support available from government and industry for women entrepreneurs in the New South Wales region. The WONNSW platform (Figure 2) contains a suite of resources such as “business plan templates, business viability assessment tools, an event calendar, creative design resources, grant and funding avenues, marketing and website options, networking opportunities” (NSW Department of Industry 2016)8.

Figure 2. http://www.wonnsw.com.au/

Strategic design of information systems in public administration systems: Digitalised information systems can enable effective inter-deparmental coordination for convergent public service delivery, as demonstrated by Brazil’s Mae Coruja programme.

Data analysis to assess user preferences: Appropriately combining traditional surveys with online opinion polls can enable effective tracking of user preferences, for responsive design. Women’s participation in such exercises is essential for governance that promotes institutional transparency and inclusive public decision making, as also acknowledged by Targets 16.6 and 16.7 of Agenda 2030. The Seoul single women initiative, launched in 2014, aims at providing a comprehensive set of support services for single women – covering housing, health care, neighbourhood safety, and employment. To ensure that the design of services reflects the priorities of the beneficiaries, the initiative has opened an e-policy forum inviting single women to voice their needs and priorities. Ongoing data analysis from this forum as well as periodic small-sample needs assessment studies on the ground shape the directions of this initiative.

In recent years, there have been a number of multi-sector collaborations in mobile based service delivery in the global South. Government departments, mobile telephone operators, private sector entities and CSOs engaged in content development have come together to harness mobile-based informational networking to expand women’s access to information about reproductive health, child care, nutrition, financial literacy and more (GSMA 2015, DIMAGI 2016)9. The GSMA mWomen programme is one such well-known example. It seeks to support the incubation of sustainable business models that provide mobile-based value added informational services directed at women, in emerging telecom markets, and persuade governments to use their Universal Service Funds to invest in the development of such services.

Research and evidence from the ground indicate that such m-information services are successful in enhancing women’s status, when supported by the following conditions:

1. Content is creative and context-appropriate.

   In Bangladesh, the Aponjon maternal and child health care mobile information service – that has emerged as a collaborative effort between the Mobile Alliance for Maternal Action, the Bangladesh Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, and the social enterprise Dnet – pays special attention to micro-local cultural aspects. This service delivers voice messages twice a week – and offers both text and voice options, taking into consideration the low levels of formal education of women in the target area. Content development tries to ensure that the messages are entertaining, and not prescriptive. Therefore, for the voice messages, a ‘mini skit’ format has been adopted, in which real-life scenarios involving a pregnant woman, her family members, and a doctor, are acted out. As prevailing gender cultural norms result in a situation where male family members gate-keep women’s access to and use of mobile phones, a companion information service has been launched that is targeted at their husbands – which reinforces the messages directed at women, and encourages the involvement of men in pregnancy, birth and child care related decision making (mHealth Compendium accessed 5 September 2017; http://www.aponjon.com.bd/ accessed 5 September 2017).

   Another example is the Dab IYO Dahab initiative, a US-AID supported collaboration between the international non-profit research and development organisation Education Development Centre and the mobile operator Souktel. This initiative sought to provide financial literacy services to improve money management skills of young women in Puntland, south-central Somalia, between 2008 and 2011. Building on the region’s tradition of oral storytelling, this m-learning service created an IAI/ interactive audio instruction mechanism which enabled participants to dial into an audio library and listen to voice clips on topics of their choice (UNESCO 2015).

2. Services are affordable.

   The Sanchar Shakti programme of the Department of Telecommunications, government of India, is a useful example of subsidised mobile information services that deliver free-of-cost, value-added mobile info services (over SMS/ Short Message Service and IVR/ Interactive Voice Response networks) to marginalised women. More details in Module 4.

3. Services are backed by institutional support for longer term impact.

   Mobile information services directed at marginalised women cannot do much to open up new pathways to empowerment, unless backed by concrete institutional support. For example, studies of mobile price information networks for marginal women farmers reveals that these services can be transformational, only if backed by governmental support for sourcing capital, subsidies/discounts for acquiring farm inputs, storage and warehousing facilities, and linkages to producer cooperatives (Burrell 2015)10.

   This has been effectively accomplished by the m-learning initiative of the Open University of Sri Lanka11 that seeks to build financial literacy of rural women farmers. This initiative makes available weekly audio lessons and tests to course participants over a mobile IVR/ Interactive Voice Response platform. Additionally, the initiative has focused on building linkages with banks for longer-term impacts on livelihoods. Through an arrangement with the Regional Development Bank, credit services have been provided to participants who succesfully completed the course. The Open University of Sri Lanka and Sri Lanka Telecom Mobitel have launched another convergent digital enskillment service for daughters of women farmers who participated in the financial literacy training (Wanasundera and Herath 2017)12.

4. Pilots are appropriately institutionalised within government.

   Involving private sector and civil society partners in developing innovative pilots of m-information services can certainly make women-directed e-service delivery more creative. However, for such pilots to have long-lasting impacts, they should be institutionalised. The experience of the mWomen service in Fiji provides some useful lessons in this regard. The mWomen e-service is a subscription-based SMS service that offers a daily set of free info-updates on the following themes: women’s and children’s legal rights, family law, and gender based violence. It was initiated in March 2013, as a partnership between the Department of Women, Government of Fiji and Vodafone. In November 2013, an additional SMS Counseller component — a free short code number that members of the public can text to, for obtaining legal advice and counselling — was launched. A partnership was established with the NGO ‘Empower Pacific’ to assist users of this service. However, none of these collaborative arrangements were backed by formal partnership agreements between the parties involved. This has resulted in a situation where the government’s involvement has tapered off over time, and Vodafone is now the primary driver. For citizens, this means that there is no way they can demand minimum levels of service quality. Also, the long-term sustainability of the service has been called into question, as it is highly unlikely that the government will pick up the service if Vodafone ceases its involvement. This can already be witnessed in the SMS Counselor component – where the lack of formal financial support for the NGO ‘Empower Pacific’ has hampered the quality and reach of support.

5. Women are supported to use e-information through digital literacy.

   Government-led efforts to promote women’s access to information and knowledge resources can be fully effective, only when backed by efforts to build women’s digital capabilities. For more details, see the discussion on digital literacy programmes for women in Module 3.

Two specific ways in which e-services can expand economic opportunities for women entrepreneurs are detailed below.

1. An exclusive online marketplace for women entrepreneurs can help women overcome their exclusion from mainstream markets.

   For instance, the webportal http://www.ejoyeeta.com/ (literally, victorious), set up by the government of Bangladesh in 2013 using its Innovation Service Fund, has enabled more than 60,000 women producers and 5,000 micro-entrepreneurs to advertise and sell their products online. In March 2016, the Ministry of Women and Child Development, government of India, launched a similar initiative – Mahila e-Haat (literally, Women’s e-marketplace) – where women entrepreneurs and self help groups and non-governmental organisations working with women artisans/producer cooperatives, across the country, can market their products. The portal eliminates middlemen, by facilitating direct contact between the vendor and buyer. Unlike mainstream e-commerce platforms, Mahila e-Haat also provides a peer discussion forum, e-learning services, support services for entrepreneurs. The year end review of the portal by the Ministry of Women and Child Development reveals that “...Women entrepreneurs/self help groups/non-governmental organisations from 22 states are showcasing approximately 1800 products/services. Women entrepreneurs/ self help goups/ non-governmental orgaisations registered as vendors have transacted business [volume of] over 2 million INR, which is a substantial amount keeping in mind the micro nature of the individual businesses” (Press Information Bureau India 2016)13.

2. Promoting peer networking among women entrepreneurs.

   WeGATE (https://www.wegate.eu/who-we-are, accessed 2017)14, a web portal supported by the European Commission, seeks to be a hub for online networking, exchange and cooperation among aspiring and current women entrepreneurs – to help them identify timely and appropriate access to finance, business contacts, training and learning opportunities, and other resources, in the contexts that they are located in. Such ICT-enabled networking solutions are extremely important for women entrepreneurs, as oftentimes, gender social norms and the double burden of managing paid work and household responsibilities prevent them from engaging with the world outside their immediate communities (ADB 2014)15.

This constraint is at least partially addressed through peer discussion forums and personalised advice that is made available at the click of a mouse.

For more information on the digital opportunity for building women’s enterprise, see Module 2 of the Women and ICT Frontier initiative of United Nations Asian and Pacific Training Centre for Information and Communication Technology for Development. Access these modules at http://e-learning.unapcict.org/wifiinfobank/data/Module_C2.pdf

Crisis support: Mobile-based safety applications/ emergency apps have received a lot of attention in policy and programming for GBV prevention and promotion of women’s personal security. Investment in such apps may be useful when it is part of a larger effort to build a techno-enabled institutional support mechanism for gender based violence. In 2015, the city of Seoul launched a Safe City project in response to the rising number of street sexual assault cases that were being reported. Through a careful pattern analysis of crime records of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency and data available with four support centres for victims of sex crimes, the initiative developed an effective plan for neighbourhood patrolling, with community involvement. Additionally, a hotline for effective response to distress calls has been set up. As many as 656 convenience stores across the city have been designated as “Women’s Safety Patrol Houses”. A woman can enter any of these 24x7 stores, if she is in a situation of distress – and the clerk on duty will then activate a wireless alarm that will immediately notify the police control room. A smart phone app has been used to supplement the initiative – the “Seoul Smart App” – which provides the location of these safety patrol houses.

Another point to keep in mind – especially for governments taking the route of private sector collaborations for safety app development – is the need to ensure well-defined policies of privacy and/or terms of use for informed consent. Without this, the risk of identity theft and extralegal surveillance increases for users – as effectively demonstrated by a recent review of popular mobile safety apps (Lakshane and Chinmayi 2017)16.

Do’s and dont’s for designing mobile-based crisis support solutions/ Safety apps

GBV prevention: It is well recognised that gender based violence has its roots in patriarchal norms that condone it by reinforcing women’s subordination. Therefore, any effort at GBV prevention can be successful only when it attempts to transform deep-seated cultural norms and attitudes in communities, breaking the prevailing culture of silence on the issue. Undoubtedly, this is a long drawn process of deep socio-cultural change, but the Our Watch initiative, Australia, stands out as a success (See Box 3)

The Mission Convergence initiative of the state government of Delhi that has set up a network of one-stop-shop kiosks in urban-poor neighbourhoods, in partnership with local NGOs, has paid careful attention to this dimension. These kiosks are housed in pre-existing Gender Resource Centres run by these NGOs for women’s empowerment efforts at the community level. The rationale guiding this decision was that these spaces had already been established as ‘women’s spaces’, and therefore, women beneficiaries would not hesitate to come forward to access public information or claim their entitlements.

The Universal Digital Centres set up by the government of Bangladesh in every local government office in the country, under a franchisee model that enlists local village entrepreneurs, has attempted to enforce this. The initiative guidelines have made it mandatory for every centre to be operated by a male and female entrepreneur, at all times. In a cultural context where prevailing gender norms restrict women from interacting with men who are not family members, this goes a long way in ensuring women’s accessibility to e-services (Genilo 2017)18.