Voice based solution using AI may be developed so that UMANG may reach to common people living in the remotest corners of the country: Ravi Shankar Prasad

New Delhi:To mark the occasion of 3 years of UMANG and 2000+ services milestone, an online conference was organized under the chairmanship of Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad, Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology, Communications and Law & Justice on November 23, 2020.

Key partners of UMANG – Employee Provident Fund Organization, Employee State Insurance Corporation, Ministries of External Affairs, Health, NPPA, DAR&PG, Education, Agriculture, Animal Husbandry, Staff Selection Commission (SSC) and senior Officers from the Cabinet Secretariat were also present during the conference.

In coordination with Ministry of External Affairs, UMANG’s international version was launched by Shri Ravi Shankar Prasad during the conference for select countries that include USA, UK, Canada, Australia, UAE, Netherlands, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand. It will help Indian international students, NRIs and Indian tourists abroad, to avail Government of India services, anytime. It will also help in taking India to the world through ‘Indian Culture’ services available on UMANG and create interest amongst foreign tourists to visit India. The international version of the UMANG App can be downloaded by going to the Play Store of specific countries. Expressing his thoughts on this occasion, the Minister said that Indians globally where keen to connect with India and maintain their contact with their roots and hence Government services available on UMANG must play a very proactive role for NRIs abroad. He added that the cultural portfolio available on UMANG will be extremely useful for Indians abroad to pass on information on Indian culture and heritage to the next generation.

To mark the milestone of 2000+ services on UMANG and its 3 year journey, Shri Prasad also launched an e-Book which presents major milestones of UMANG and major services available on UMANG App classified into various categories for different segments of society – farmers, students, culture, health, utility services, public grievances and citizen engagement, finance & banking, transport, services for women and children, youth skills and employment, police and legal services, MEA services, States Services etc.

The Union Minister unveiled the newly instituted UMANG Awards for Partner Departments of Centre and States based on the highest number of transactions across services. In the Central Department category, EPFO was bestowed the Platinum Partner award, followed by DigiLocker as the Gold Partner while ESIC and Bharat Gas services were declared the Silver Partner; the Bronze Partner award was announced for HP Gas, Doordarshan, National Consumer Helpline, CBSE, Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana-Urban, Jeevan Pramaan & Jan Aushadhi Sugam. This was based on monthly average transactions. For the services of State Governments, the top 3 States based on average monthly transactions were – Gujarat, Haryana and Madhya Pradesh.

Speaking on the occasion of 3 Years of UMANG, the Union Minister said “Digital India must lead to Digital Inclusion; it must bridge the Digital divide. And this must be achieved by technology which is home grown and also inclusive. This was concretized when the Prime Minister had told me that I want Governance to be available on the palm of every Indian. And thereafter we started this programme and what has really struck me that as on March 2020 UMANG had nearly 643 services; and today in the same year UMANG has 2000+ services. It indicates the sheer digital appetite of ordinary Indians. And secondly, a very resounding validation of the Prime Minister that we have governance in the hands of every Indian. This is the metamorphosis from e-Governance to m-Governance. And that is the real shining success of UMANG.”

Citing examples of Aadhaar, GSTN, Ayushman Bharat, UPI and UMANG, the Minister underlined that digital transformation was accelerating In India due to home grown enterprise external models and attributed this contribution to India’s experts in the technological domain.

Complementing the UMANG Team, the Minister said that a voice based solution using AI may be developed so that UMANG may reach to common people living in the remotest corners of the country, who might not prefer to access services over a voice enabled interface.

Secretary, MeitY, Shri Ajay Sawhney also addressed the meeting and asked the UMAMG team to continue building services to realise the dream of enabling seamless and interoperable services across departments to citizens in an integrated manner.

Secretary, Coordination, Cabinet Secretariat appreciated the role played by UMANG in enabling DBT services and mentioned that 78 DBT services were already available on UMANG and very soon, all DBT services would be integrated on UMANG.

Secretary, CPV, Ministry of External Affairs, Shri Sanjay Bhattacharyya, thanked MeitY for launching the international version of UMANG and mentioned that this will greatly enhance access to services for people abroad. He also mentioned that MEA would partner with UMANG to bring more Visa and Consular services on UMANG platform.

The UMANG mobile app (Unified Mobile Application for New-age Governance) is a Government of India all-in-one single, unified, secure, multi-channel, multi-lingual, multi-service mobile app. providing access to high impact services of various Government of India Departments and State Governments.

UMANG has now grown to provide 2039 services (373 from 88 Central departments, 487 from 101 departments of 27 States and 1,179 services for utility bill payments) and the count is galloping ahead!Over 3 years, UMANG has reached a level of more than 3.75 crore downloads and ~2.5 crore registered users while maintaining an average Play Store rating of >4 from more than 136K users.