Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the Unified Mobile Application for New-age Governance (UMANG) app in the presence of Ranil Wickramasinghe, Prime Minister of Sri Lanka at the Global Conference on Cyberspace 2017 in New Delhi.
The app will provide 162 government services online so that citizens can use these services on their mobiles.
“We in India, give primacy to the human face of technology, and are using it to improve what I call, “ease of living.” Empowerment through digital access, is an objective that the Government of India is especially committed to. Digital India is the world’s largest, technology-led transformative programme which is paving the way for our citizens to avail digital services. We are using mobile power or M-power to empower our citizens,” the Prime Minister said.
On this ocassion, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Minister for Electronics & Information Technology and Law & Justice, Manoj Sinha, Minister of State(IC), Department of Telecommunication, KJ Alphons, Minister of State, Tourism, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Secretary General of International Telecommunication Union, Houlin Zhao were also present.
In his welcome address, Prasad said, “The fundamental philosophy of our government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi is ‘Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas’ (cooperation of all for development of all). Digital India seeks to realise this goal of inclusive development by using the tools of technology. The digital India vision of our Prime Minister Narendra Modi has given a new approach to achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations. It has given a new paradigm of technology led development for sustainable development. The spectrum of India’s digital development ranges from digital delivery of services to rising digital economy powered by 1.3 billion people and reinforced by demographic dividend where 65 per cent of them are below the age of 35.”
The Prime Minister also felicitated the winners of the Global Cyber Challenge called Peace-a-thon. The winners were declared following a 36-hour challenge in the Grand Finale of the Hackathon, wherein hundreds of teams from throughout India and from countries like USA, Canada, France, Argentina, Australia and Algeria turned up to showcase their talent and compete in the challenge.
This is the fifth edition of GCCS wherein international leaders, policymakers, industry experts, think tanks and cyber experts gathered to deliberate on issues and challenges for optimally using cyber space.
The overall goals of GCCS 2017 are to promote the importance of inclusiveness and human rights in global cyber policy, to defend the status quo of an open, interoperable and unregimented cyberspace, to create political commitment for capacity building initiatives to address the digital divide and assist countries, and to develop security solutions in a balanced fashion that duly acknowledge the importance of the private sector and technical community.