The National e-Governance Division (NeGD) under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Common Service Centre (CSC) E-Governance Services India Limited, earlier this week.
CSCs are the access points for the delivery of essential public utility services, social welfare schemes, healthcare, financial, education, and agriculture services.
According to a press release, the move will facilitate the delivery of UMANG app services at CSCs, in an assisted mode, making services on the app available to citizens through a network of 375,000 CSCs. UMANG stands for the unified mobile application for new-age governance and is an all-in-one single unified secure multi-channel, platform, and service freeware application.
The CSC operators, village-level entrepreneurs (VLEs), will enable citizens to avail e-government services from 140 departments via the app. This will benefit citizens who, either do not have access to smartphones or are not comfortable accessing app-based e-services on their own, the release stated.
The aim is to not only enhance access to government services significantly but also expand the gamut of services that VLEs offer citizens, increasing their income and viability. The UMANG services are being enabled on CSCs without any additional cost. NeGD is making all services available to CSCs at zero cost.
The synergy between UMANG and CSCs will make over 1,000 services from several departments on the UMANG platform available to CSCs, the release noted.
UMANG is available on Android, iOS, all web browsers platforms, and select 57 services on KaiOS (available on Jio feature phones). UMANG has reached a level of more than 31.2 million downloads, with 20.5 million registered users.
Presently 1,011 services (294 from central, 441 from state departments, and 276 from bill payments), from 70 central departments, and 71 state departments from 26 states are available on UMANG.
UMANG has so far seen about one billion service transactions and about two billion hits. This significant alliance of UMANG and CSCs will empower citizens, especially during these unprecedented times, ensuring ease, convenience, and security.
It is powered by a robust back-endeep28octd platform providing access to high impact services of various organisations, both central and state. It offers pan Indian e-government services like healthcare, finance, education, housing, energy, agriculture, and employment.
In May, MeitY integrated India Meteorological Department (IMD) services on the app. As OpenGov reported earlier, seven services hosted on IMD’s website have been on-boarded on the app. ‘Current weather’ provides the current temperature, humidity, wind speed, and direction for 150 cities. It is updated eight times a day. Also, it offers information on the sunrise, sunset, and moonrise. ‘Nowcast’ provides three hourly warnings of localised weather phenomena and their intensity issued for about 800 stations and districts by State Meteorological Centres of IMD. In case of severe weather, its impact also is included in the warning.
A city forecast provides the past 24 hours and seven-day forecast of weather conditions around 450 cities in India are given. The app also offers information about any district’s rainfall; daily, weekly, monthly, and cumulative series are available. It alerts a user about dangerous weather and has a facility to track cyclonic storms.
