PM Modi launches UMANG app for govt services

The Unified Mobile Application for New-age Governance (UMANG) app, touted as a one-stop application for availing all important government services, was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday.

The app was to be launched in December 2016, but was delayed for close to a year due to many beta tests on the app, according to a statement by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology.

UMANG will operate in 12 languages, including English. The app is said to provide a single window access to government services such as national scholarships, women's safety, health-care applications, e-District and Passport Seva.

A senior Information Technology official told Business Standard that the app might be Aadhaar-linked and may have all the details of the user. UMANG will also be linked to other government digital services like Aadhaar, DigiLocker, and PayGov.

Any new such service will automatically be integrated with the platform.

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.

The report states that  70 million of the 905 million smartphone users are from rural areas. The app was designed in such a way that it takes up minimum space on one's phone. Most of these apps have been developed in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Gujarati and various other regional languages.