Prime Minister Narendra Modi has announced the launch of a new e-governance App known as Umang (Unified Mobile Application for New-age Governance). The app is developed by Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and National e-Governance Division (NeGD) and it will be available on Android, iOS, and Windows Phone platforms.
The application will basically allow users to access 162 services of 33 government department on a single mobile application. “Today, we launched the Umang Mobile App, which will provide over a hundred citizen-centric services. At the back-end, these services will be catered for by many different departments of the Union and State Governments. This integrated approach will add an automatic layer of ‘peer performance pressure’, in the working of these departments,” Prime Minister Modi said in a statement.
The app bundles a host of government services like Aadhaar, DigiLocker, Bharat Bill Payment System and Rapid Assessment System. The app will also all citizens to access e-government services from the Central, State, Local Bodies and Agencies of government on app, web, SMS and IVR channels.
Users can also access CBSE, NCERT, AICTE, PAN, Income Tax, Digi Sevak, Bharat and Indane Gas, e Pathsala, Passport, HP, GST, Bharat Gas, Soil Health Card, PMKVY (Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana), MoHUPA (Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation), Crop Insurance, ORS (Online Registration System) to various hospitals across the country and more.
The app supports Aadhaar-based and other authentication mechanisms for service access. The sensitive profile data is saved in an encrypted format and no one can view this information. The application supports 13 Indian languages and the government has promised that soon it support feature phones without internet connectivity through USSD.