Govt launches public contest on suggestions for PMO mobile app

The government today launched a contest for taking suggestions from the public to develop a mobile application for the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). The application, which will be developed in association with Google, is likely to be out in two months. The contest aims to seek suggestions from the public regarding the structure and content of the application. “The whole Mygov programme is designed to have citizen engagement at the widest level. If we engage people, then we get various new suggestions,” Communications and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said while launching the contest. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had launched the website MyGov.in to provide a platform to citizens to share their views and opinions on important issues such as clean Ganga or skill development. Prasad said the Modi-led government is using crowd sourcing model to get suggestions from the general public and later incorporating them while forming government policies.  He said the Railway and the Union budgets used  suggestions given by public including proposal of bio toilets, online payment facility for food, ideal railway station by involvement of MPs in railways, gold monetisation and sovereign bonds schemes and the need for a law to tackle benami property among others. “Through crowd sourcing, whatever suggestions people gave regarding the Budget, have been included into railway as well as the general Budget… So you can see our government not only engages people but also acts on the feedback received from crowd sourcing,” Prasad said. He further said that this shows extraordinary commitment of the government to use social media for social good. Regarding the PMO’s application, Google India MD Rajan Anandan said the app will be made in India by best developers of the country. He said the app is likely to be developed in two months and it will be a “Made in India and Made for India.” PTI