Contest for PMO mobile app begins

NEW DELHI: Communication and Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad has launched a nation-wide contest for development of a mobile app for the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) in New Delhi.

Prime Minister Narender Modi at his recent address at the 25th foundation day of the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) had announced the intention to launch a mobile app for PMO.

The Government of India’s citizen engagement platform MyGov will host this contest in association with Google. The contest will be organized over the next three months in three phases of ideation, wireframe development and App development.

The best app will be then presented to the PMO. The team developing the wining app will get a chance to visit the headquarters of Google in the USA.

The contest is open for all citizens of India above the age 18 years, who are registered on MyGov (https://mygov.in). Participants can submit their entries on the contest page. Each phase will be assessed by an independent jury constituted by MyGov.

Speaking on the occasion, Prasad said that views of the citizens collected through the MyGov and other forum have been incorporated into railway and Union Budgets. The need to tackle benami properties, the idea for introduction of sovereign gold bound scheme have come through some suggestions from the people. He said this government wants to take action on ideas obtained through crowd sourcing and also wants to use social media for public good.

RS Sharma, Secretary, DeitY, gave an overview of the Digital India program, whose aim is to first digitally connect all citizens of the government and then digitally empower them.

Gaurav Dwivedi, CEO MyGov, charted out the evolution of MyGov, since its launch on July 26, 2014, and laid out some key features of the newly released MyGov Version 2.0.

Rajan Anandan, MD, Google India, MyGov’s partner in the contest, spoke of Google`s commitment to partner India`s digital drive at multiple levels.