Google in Asia

If the Indian Prime Minister’s Office had an app, what would it do?

India is going mobile. Every month, more than 6 million people are accessing the Internet for the very first time, through their mobile device. The phone is your window to the outside world, and soon your phone could be your window to the Prime Minister’s Office.

We share Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of innovation, aspiration and connectivity. That’s why we’re so happy to be supporting MyGov in a first of a kind competition as part of the Digital India program to create an app for the Prime Minister’s Office, which PM Modi announced over the weekend:

Launch of Prime Minister's Office Mobile App Contest

Launch of Prime Minister's Office Mobile App Contest

Rather than tell people what app they should use to engage with the government, the competition will give people a chance to say what they want from an app and India’s immensely talented developers an opportunity to build it. And we’ll provide some guidance and mentoring along the way.

The contest - more info here - will start rolling out now through three phases:
  1. Starting right now and running through March 12th, anyone with an idea on what features an app from the Prime Minister’s Office should include can share it, and vote on other people’s ideas, on (you’ll need to create an account to get started)
  2. Once all the ideas are in, teams of developers will then be invited to submit rough blueprints (wireframes) for how they would build an app for the Prime Minister’s Office
  3. Out of all the entrants, the five developer teams with the best designs will be invited to build an app - with some mentoring from Googlers - and the winning app, as chosen by an independent jury, will become the official app of the Prime Minister’s Office

India’s move from 300 to 500 million people online will reshape everything, including the government-citizen relationship. Already 50 per cent of India’s Internet users are mobile only. No country has built their Internet on that computing platform, in those numbers, at such a pace. In a time of such rapid, exhilarating change, no one person can claim to know the best tools the government can offer its citizens. But, as a group, we probably do know the answer. That’s the insight that lies behind democracy in the first place.