mCity: User Focused Development of Mobile Services Within the City of Stockholm

Abstract

This chapter presents the mCity Project; a project owned by the City of Stockholm; aiming at creating user-friendly mobile services in collaboration with businesses. Starting from the end-users’ perspective; mCity focuses on how to satisfy existing needs in the community; initiating test pilots within a wide range of areas; from health care and education; to tourism and business. The lesson learned is that user focus creates involvement among end users and leads to the development of sustainable systems that are actually used after they have been implemented. This is naturally vital input not only to municipalities and governments but also for the IT/telecom industry at large. Using the knowledge from mCity; the authors suggest a new; broader definition of “m-government” which focuses on mobile people rather than mobile technology.