The government will soon come out with a non-emergency number -- 166 -- for providing information about various departments, including health and social welfare.

"We got a single three-digit non-emergency number 166. The way we use 100 or 108 for emergency services, the same way a new number has been allocated now for non-emergency services," DeitY (department of electronics and information technology) additional secretary (e-governance) Rita Teaotia said.

Teaotia, who was addressing a PHD function in the national capital, said the service would be available shortly.

The initiative is part of mobile governance programme of the government aimed at helping citizens to have access to public services through their mobile phones.

Under this initiative, the government has created a core infrastructure Mobile Services Delivery Gateway (MSDG) which is a shared technical infrastructure.

This integrates mobile applications with the existing e-governance infrastructure and delivery of public services to the users.

About 80 central, state and government agencies have already been brought on board and more than 40 departments are in the process of being integrated with MSDG.