Prime Minister Mr Narendra Modi and his government are promoting a master mobile phone application which will have integrated access to all the government services. The application is called UMANG – Unified Mobile App for New-age Governance. The project is being developed by National e-Governance Division (NeGD) of the Union Ministry of Communications and Information Technology.
The application will integrate almost 200 government services such as passport services, land records, income tax, e-Post, women safety and the like. The government plans to bring this platform to people through an application, an SMS service and IVR. Under Digital India campaign, the government is planning to make e-governance ‘Mobile First’.
The government has uploaded a 207 page proposal document of the application on the the DigiLocker website to invite potential agencies for development and maintenance of the application. According to the document the plan is to roll out the first phase of the application in under 3 years.
UMANG will have transaction details so the users can contact the authorities in case of an anomaly. It will also have live chat support to help users. In the proposal, there is an emphasis on using technology which is light and not heavily reliant on the internet.
The application will be available in English as well as in regional languages. Users would be able to access the government cloud services such as PayGov and DigiLocker. Other payment gateway services apart from PayGov will also be made available. DigiLocker will let the citizens store their documents in the secure government cloud. Users can share a digital certificate or a document to various authorities through the application so there is no need of visiting the departments physically. The application will be integrated with Aadhar card authentication and in case of non-Aadhar card authentication, PAN card will be used. The application will be available for Android, iOS, and Windows devices.
The good news is that UMANG will provide easy access to various government services via a single mobile application, easy to remember short code and single toll free number. It will act as an enabler and facilitator in developing overall mobile based service delivery ecosystem in India.
News Source: Zee News | News18 | Huffington Post | Inc42
