Govt's Umang app finally sees the light of the day: All you need to know

Almost a year after its announcement, Prime Minister Narendra Modi finally launched the one-stop shop mobile application for all government services UMANG (Unified Mobile Application for New-age Governance). While the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology earlier said that the app would be launched by December 2016, there has been a delay due to several beta tests that were being conducted over the last year. 

"It is an evolving platform designed for citizens of India to offer them access to the pan India e-Gov services from the Central, State, Local Bodies, and Agencies of government on app, web, SMS, and IVR channels," the government said. Senior officials of the ministry said it is a defining app in the Digital India initiative and the main e-governance driver for the government. 

It would be a window to access almost all sorts of government services, including national scholarships, women's safety, health care applications, e-District and Passport Seva. It would be initially available in 12 languages including English.

A senior IT ministry official said: “A huge team of experts — including software and app developers and government officials — worked on the app. We tried to ensure the app did not require a lot of space so that people stick to it after downloading (it on their mobile phones). This could be an effective gateway to all government services. It might be Aadhaar-linked and will have all the details of the user.”

Some of the features include bringing together all government departments and their services on a single platform to provide better and easier services to citizens. It aligns all government services with the mobile first strategy to leverage mobile adoption trends. Provides seamless integration with other Digital India Services like Aadhaar, DigiLocker, and PayGov. Any new such service will automatically be integrated with the platform. It is also designed to enable citizens to discover, download, access, and use all government services easily.

The government has been pushing its apps. Till now, 1500 apps in various regional languages have been launched by the government in association with the units of the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing across the country.

According to the Department of Electronics and Information and Technology officials, the Prime Minister’s Office has given them standing orders to develop and promote apps for specific purposes, as smartphone penetration in urban and rural areas has drastically increased.

Of the 905 million smartphone users in India, 70 million are from rural areas.

Most of these apps have been developed in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Gujarati and various other regional languages.