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The government is working on the next version of its citizen engagement interface, MyGov, sprucing the website to make it more transparent, open and interactive.
Also in the works is a mobile application for MyGov, expected to take the platform to more masses. An Android app will be launched first, expected in a month, followed by an iOS and Windows version.
According to officials of the department of electronics and information technology, the new website, the beta version of which is being tested, will have new features such as surveys and polls, along with talks and speeches by important political leaders and bureaucrats.
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Launched about six months earlier, MyGov.in is the government’s project through which it solicits ideas and inputs from the public on various government policy matters and initiatives. The names of some of the marquee programmes of the current government such as the Jan Dhan Yojana and Swachh Bharat came through this portal, along with talk points for the radio discussion between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US President Barack Obama.
The portal has 800,000 users, 160 discussion themes and is used by 27 ministries. About 50,000 comments are received every week and 60,000 users are added each month.
Gaurav Dwivedi, chief executive of MyGov, said the idea was to make systemic improvements, along with increasing the citizen interaction through new features. “There are more people with mobile phones than computers in the country. That is why we are launching a mobile application,” he added. To take the initiative to the rural masses who might not be well conversant with English, the government is also working on local language and SMS-based solutions. An advertising agency is also in the process of being hired to create more awareness of the platform.
Business Standard had reported last month that the Union government was commissioning a project to analyse public sentiment about its activities on various online platforms. The project will cover state-owned MyGov.in, social media portals such as Facebook and Twitter, and the top 10 news websites. The analysis will also extend to the Twitter and Facebook accounts of government ministries and departments. The Centre expects the platform to be ready in two months.
This would be the first occasion that the Centre is deploying a tool to ‘officially’ listen in on social media conversations and monitor media reports, as well as subsequent public reaction. The idea is also to automate the process of providing a summary of inputs received on MyGov on discussion topics which are forwarded to the government agencies concerned.
The volume of comments received on the platform is making it difficult for the Centre to manually sift through for the most relevant ones, say officials. The government says it would only study posts that are “public” and not build any kind of back-end access into the network of internet companies.
