(This story originally appeared in on Jan 30, 2016)

NEW DELHI: The Modi administration wants to make all government services available on mobile phones in the next five years so that citizens don’t have to visit offices, making it much easier for them to get their work done efficiently and conveniently.The Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG), which reports to the Prime Minister’s Office ( PMO ), proposed this last week in a report prepared along with Nasscom and KPMG The move would be a vital element of India’s push to improve its ranking of 119 out of 193 countries in the UN E-Government Index and breaking into the top 10, DARPG secretary Devendra Chaudhary said in the report."In order to achieve the vision of Digital India and ensure the delivery of government services to citizens, the mobile platform needs to be leveraged to its full potential," said the report’s foreword by JS Deepak, secretary, Department of Electronics and Information Technology, who was named on Friday as telecom secretary."Multi-lingual mobile-governance services are important for service delivery. Aadhaar-linked, mobile-based authentication mechanism needs to be developed to become a widely-used channel for citizen authentication," Deepak said.Nasscom president R Chandrashekhar pressed for digital technologies to be brought centre-stage in the delivery of services to citizens.