Compatriots’ ideas for new features to be added in mObywatel

Everyone knows the saying that if something is good for everything, it really is good for nothing. mObywatel in its current form is a great application, and with the features that will appear later this year, it will be complete. Meanwhile, compatriots – including Prime Minister Morawiecki – would see several other new functions in it.

New ideas for “improvement” and “development” of the government mobile application mObywatel were collected and written down on the board by visitors to the stand of the Ministry of Digitization at the Impact’23 international congress.

Minister Cieszyn:

We held a lot of discussions in Poznań – we come back from the international congress with new ideas and even greater motivation for further activities in the field of digitization. In the mObywatel zone, specialists from the Central Information Technology Center were waiting for you. We conducted corridor research, we asked you what features you would like to see in the new version of the app. All answers will be analyzed and the most interesting ones will be implemented in the next version of mObywatel.

From what I’ve seen on this board, I personally don’t really see these essential features, most of them would be of little use, and for most people using mObywatel an unnecessary overload of this application.

However, before we move on to these new ideas, a reminder of what will appear in the mObywatel application this year – as for me, I would stop there.

The mObywatel mobile application was downloaded from mobile stores by April this year over 10 million times. People who download it to their devices have been convinced by such functions as access to driving licenses, checking penalty points and data contained in the registration document, OC policy and vehicle card, or the Large Family Card and mLegitymacja of a pensioner.

This year, in turn, such functions as mIdentification card or Citizen’s Card are to appear – in June, provisional driving licence, logging in via the e-administration application – in July, and finally the long-awaited reservation of the PESEL number – from September.

Minister Cieszyn:

We will be the largest country in the European Union that has introduced a digital identity document – mDowod. The essence of the activity of the Ministry of Digitization is to improve the comfort of citizens’ lives, including facilitating their contact with public institutions. We will deal with administrative matters in Poland quickly and conveniently.

New ideas for the development of the mObywatel application

Moving on to the ideas, among them there are such proposals as mDocuments for pets, sign language interpreter, broadcasts of matches of the Polish national team, weapons permits, logging in to a bank or to mObywatel with a bank account, EHIC, long-term tickets or receipts.

I do not understand at all what the matches of the Polish national team are doing here, I know that there are national regulations that require TV stations to broadcast them in open channels, but why upload them to mObywatel? I also do not know what logging in to banks does here, a sufficient second ingredient to log in to electronic banking is mobile authorization in the applications of our banks.

In turn, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki added his proposal to this board in the form of reporting threats related to domestic violence or violence in the immediate environment. I sympathize with the victims of domestic violence, but it is not without reason that their first contact in such a case is usually anonymous hotlines, I do not think that they reach for an application that requires logging in for this purpose. However, in the event of an immediate threat, we will call 112 faster, and at least leave our location to the relevant services, unless the prime minister wants to push the idea of ​​accurately locating mObywatel users in this way – then it would make more sense, but I don’t know if you would like it.

Nevertheless, it can be seen that the popularity of mObywatel is really high and stimulates the imagination, but I would leave the implementation of such ideas for now and focus on the available and proper implementation of those that are to appear in the application in the coming months.
Source: Ministry of Digitization.