To further enhance the initiatives of Digital India Programme, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) services have been brought on the “UMANG App”.
UPSC may puzzle you by asking a question such as: Which of the following services are included under UMANG App? It would provide some ambiguous 5-6 options.
UMANG App
- The UMANG is an acronym for Unified Mobile Application for New-age Governance.
- It is an all-in-one single, unified, secure, multi-channel, multi-platform, multi-lingual, multi-service mobile app, powered by a robust back-end platform providing access to high impact services of various organizations.
- It was in 2017 to bring major government services on a single mobile app, with a larger goal to make the government accessible on the mobile phone of our citizens.
- About 660 services from 127 departments & 25 states and about 180 utility bill payment services are live and more are in pipeline.
- UMANG user base has crossed 2.1 Crore including Android, iOS, Web and KaiOS.
- Citizens can also access their Digilocker from UMANG and give their feedback after availing any service through Rapid Assessment System (RAS) which has been integrated with UMANG.
Key features
- Unified Platform: It brings together all government departments and their services on a single platform to provide better and easier services to citizens.
- Mobile-First Strategy: It aligns all government services with the mobile-first strategy to leverage mobile adoption trends.
- Integration with Digital India Services: It provides seamless integration with other Digital India Services like Aadhaar, DigiLocker, and PayGov. Any new such service will automatically be integrated with the platform.
- Uniform Experience: It is designed to enable citizens to discover, download, access, and use all government services easily.
- Secure and Scalable: It 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.
Benefits for Citizens
- Single-Point Ubiquitous Access: All government services are available for citizens on a unified platform for easy access through multiple online and offline channels (SMS, email, app, and web).
- More for Less: Only a single mobile app needs to be installed instead of each app of each department.
- Convenience: Citizens do not even need to install or update the app again to avail government services if more services are added to the platform.
- Saving of Time and Money: Citizens can anytime and anywhere avail these services through their mobile phones, desktops, and laptops without any need for visiting the department office and standing in queues.
- Uniform Experience: All the government services including payment-based transactions provide secure and uniform experience.
