One App For Over 100 E-Governance Services

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday launched The Unified Mobile Application for New-age Governance (UMANG) app which will enable citizens to access and avail all important government services. According to a statement by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, the app was scheduled to be launched in December 2016 but was delayed due to many beta tests on the app. Citizens can download this app which provides a single window access to government services such as national scholarships, women's safety, health-care applications, e-District and Passport Seva. UMANG will operate in 12 languages, including English. According to a senior Information Technology official, UMANG might be Aadhaar-linked and may have all the details of the user. The app will also be linked to other government digital services like Aadhaar, DigiLocker, and PayGov. Provisions have been made for new services to be automatically integrated with the platform. Out of 905 million smartphone users, 70 million are from rural areas. The app has been designed to use minimum space on one’s phone and is available in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Gujarati and various other regional languages. According to a statement by the government, UMANG will be an umbrella app from the central, state, local bodies, and agencies of government on app, web, SMS, and Interactive Voice Response (IVR) channels.