Senseforth.ai is collaborating with the Govt. of India to enable 700+ Million people to access key government services via a multilingual Citizen Assistant.

About ‘Ask UMANG’

UMANG - Unified Mobile Application for New-Age Governance, was launched in 2017. It is developed by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and the National e-Governance Division (NeGD) – in order to drive digital governance.

UMANG is a platform that provides citizens of India with a single point of access to over 1,200 government-led Central, State and Local services including health, education, COVID-19 vaccinations, public transport, and employment advice, as well as passport applications, utilities, cybercrime reporting, and more.

Challenge

The Government was seeking for a Conversational AI-enabled multilingual and omnichannel solution, to increase accessibility of Government-led services and information across the demographics.

Below are the key challenges that UMANG team was seeking a conversational AI-enabled solution.

• Access to Government-led Accessibility: Speed of access to relevant information continues to remain a key challenge among businesses of all kinds. The government realized that people at the grassroots level wouldn’t be able to make the most of this service.
• Maximize the Adoption of Government programs and schemes: Eliminating technology and language barriers to create a more inclusive solution – to expand the adoption of key government programs and initiatives in the long term.

UMANG app was well received by those in the population that are technology-literate. However, given the complexity of demographics of India, it was challenging for a wide adoption of the app, as only tech-literate and in English language, it wasn’t benefiting citizens were able to make the most of it.

Senseforth.ai’s Approach

Senseforth.ai built “Ask Umang”, a voice-enabled, multilingual and omnichannel Citizen Assistant. The conversational AI solution was implemented in four steps: knowledge gathering, solution orchestration, solution building, and training.

Firstly, Senseforth.ai team worked with the UMANG team to identify the top 15 critical services that citizens use most frequently.During the first phase, the UMANG team was looking to make these services accessible through an AI virtual assistant across the web and mobile applications.

Now, citizens can either type their queries or speak with the virtual assistant to obtain information or address their concerns. Based on these inputs, we developed “Ask Umang” and made it available on both the web and mobile app.

Millions of people interacted with the virtual assistant within the first few weeks of its launch; asking 100s of questions, either spoken or by text

It currently supports both English and Hindi, and more regional languages will be added soon. Now, citizens in even the most rural areas of India who have traditionally felt disconnected from technology will have an easy access to key government programs.

As part of our ongoing engagement, Senseforth.ai team continuously identifies more intents based on analytics data and enhance the capabilities of the virtual assistant.

Citizen Value: Universal Access to Information

The lack of access to UMANG services for some citizens due to technology and language barriers may not have immediate consequences, but the accessibility of these services has greatly improved their adoption of government initiatives.

Ask Umang is a one-tap platform for citizens of India to access digital governance services, using text and voice-enabled interfaces such as Apple’s Siri or Amazon’s Alexa, overcoming language and technology barriers.

Senseforth.ai conversational AI-enabled solutions ensured Universal Access to government services, for all citizens regardless of their demographic profile using UMANG platform (web & app). The citizen assistant was built on understanding text and voice input, allowing for greater accessibility for all citizens.

This improved the likelihood of more people signing up for government initiatives and programs such as the COVID-19 vaccination program. For instance, people can directly book an appointment to get a COVID vaccination done. This streamlines the process for citizens, reducing the hassle of searching for nearby vaccine centers and making appointments.

Among the over 200 services offered on UMANG, the e-Rakhtkosh (Centralized Blood Bank Management System) is one of the highly regarded. With ‘Ask UMANG’ citizens can locate the nearest blood bank for their required blood type in real-time. The integration of the Citizen Assistant with the Central Blood Bank Management System is expected to play a critical role in emergency situations, enabling people to instantly track blood availability at nearby blood banks.

Similarly, the Jan Aushadi (Generic Medicine) tab on UMANG allows citizens to locate the closest generic medicine store based on their geo-location in real-time and get the required medicines, without dependency on a specific brand or company.

On the other hand, instant access to government services such as DigiLocker (a document wallet), Aajeevika (National Rural Livelihoods Mission), Employee Provident Fund, and Indian Railways, among others, resulted in the wide adoption of government programs and initiatives.

Senseforth.ai developed an AI virtual assistant for the top 25 services. The Beta launch went live in 2022 in both English and Hindi, with the AI Citizen assistant expected to converse in 10 Indian languages and many more local dialects in the near future.

Senseforth.ai continues to work closely with government officials to analyze feedback, finetune working on the AI Citizen Assistant, and eventually roll it to many more UMANG services.