Note4Students
From UPSC perspective, the following things are important :
Prelims level: UMANG app services
Mains level: Utility of the UMANG app
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.
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