Inaugurating the 5th
Global Conference on Cyberspace on November 23, the Prime Minister of
India, Mr. Narendra Modi, launched
the UMANG App, which aims to provide
access to 162 government services on a single mobile app.
The UMANG (Unified Mobile Application for New-age
Governance) app has been developed by the Ministry of Electronics and
Information Technology (MeitY) and National e-Governance Division (NeGD) to
drive Mobile Governance in India.
The free app is available for download on the Google
Play Store, the Apple App Store
and the Windows
Store.
The app currently supports 12 major Indian languages in
addition to English and provides a single platform for all Indian Citizens to
access pan India e-Gov services offered by Central and State Government departments,
Local bodies and other utility services from private organisations. Currently
162 services from 33
departments from the national government and 4 state governments are available
on the app. The onboarding of different citizen-centric government services is
envisaged to be a continuous process, increasing the number of available
services on UMANG. There is a target
to onboard 200 departments/ applications with approximately 1200 services by
December 2019.
The UMANG service has been made available on multiple channels
like mobile application, web, IVR (Interactive voice response) and SMS which
can be accessed through smartphones, feature phones, tablets and desktops. Feature phones without internet
connectivity will be supported soon through USSD (Unstructured
Supplementary Service Data; USSD is a communications protocol used by GSM
cellular telephones to communicate with the mobile network operator's computers.
USSD messages create a real-time connection during a USSD session, allowing a
two-way exchange of a sequence of data).
UMANG provides seamless integration with the national
biometric ID, Aadhaar and Digilocker,
which provides a dedicated cloud storage space to Indian citizens for digital
issuance and verification of official documents & certificates. According
to the UMANG website, the app will soon
be integrated with PayGov,
which provides common infrastructure for central and state governments to receive
online payments from citizens using Internet banking, credit cards and debit
cards.
Users can register for UMANG using their mobile number. If
they opt to perform the Aadhaar integration, the Aadhaar profile information is
used for eKYC (Know your customer). Users cannot link their Aadhaar ID with
multiple profiles in UMANG.
Mr. Ravi Shankar
Prasad, the Minister for Electronics & Information Technology and Law &
Justice, said, “The
fundamental philosophy of our government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi is
‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas’ (cooperation of all for development of all). Digital
India seeks to realise this goal of inclusive development by using the tools of
technology. The digital India vision of our Prime Minister Narendra Modi has
given a new approach to achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals of the
United Nations. It has given a new paradigm of technology led development for
sustainable development. The spectrum of India’s digital development ranges
from digital delivery of services to rising digital economy powered by 1.3
billion people and reinforced by demographic dividend where 65% of them are
below the age of 35.”
On December 1, Mr. Ravi
Shankar Prasad tweeted that the app had been
downloaded by 2 million users within a week after its launch.
