After BHIM, PM Modi launches UMANG mobile app for government services

To reinforce the Digital India initiative and increase the penetration of e-governance in the country, a series of steps have been taken at the local and national level.

UMANG or Unified Mobile Application for New-Age Governance brings forth a cohesive system making e-governance measures, schemes, policies, and services accessible to the citizens on a single platform bringing down the complexity of the whole process. Spice Digital has been chosen as the technology partner on the UMANG project to design, develop and deliver the apps.

As a part of the Digital India initiative, myriad e-governance measures are being implemented and many government departments have found their way to a strong online presence. However, with different websites or apps for different departments, there is a high level of complexity in the whole process which has caused an aversion among users for e-governance.

This led to the realization that there is a need of a unified system to access all the services provided by the government in one place. UMANG, the app announced last year by the PMO is a part of the Digital India initiative by Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) is aimed to address this issue of multiplicity and is being hailed as the ‘Mother of all Apps’. The app would also be helping make e-governance ‘mobile first’.  

Launched with the provisions of 43 government departments that grants access to 150+ services, and target to reach 200 departments granting access to 1200+ services by December 2019.

UMANG platform differs from the existing service in providing a single app bringing down the efforts and reducing the complexities even as it works with departments that do not have mobile applications making the transitions smoother.

UMANG has added features like transaction records to help the user in case of any conflict, setting users’ preferences for frequently accessed services, shortcuts and languages. The availability of the app in 12 regional languages in addition to English makes the app user friendly and relevant to tier 2, 3 cities and the rural areas, thus widening the scope and exposure of the app. The app is basically an evolving platform that has been designed for the Indian citizens to offer them access to the pan India e-government services from the Central, State, Local Bodies, and Agencies of government on app, web, SMS, and IVR channels.

 The app supports major services like EPFO, PAN, NPS, CBSE, Bharat Gas, DigiLocker, Passport, GST, HP, Bharat & Indane Gas, e Pathshala, Income Tax, Digi Sevak, Crop Insurance and more. A citizen of India who has linked their Aadhar card to the app can effectively pay their taxes, apply for or renew their passports, book their gas, insure their crops, access & alter their pension account details, access e-books, and even check their CBSE exam results on just one single app.

The UMANG app can be downloaded on to the mobile or the user may register for it on the website https://web.umang.gov.in/. The user needs only to install one app instead of a different app for each service and the app doesn’t need to be updated every time a new service is added to the platform. Apart from this, the app provides a safe and uniform experience for all the government services including payment-based transactions.