Andhra Pradesh takes 1,126 government services to WhatsApp with Mana Mitra

Andhra Pradesh's WhatsApp-based governance platform, Mana Mitra, has expanded to offer 1,126 government services across 35 departments, serving 58.2 lakh citizens and recording more than 3.42 crore service sessions, according to an official release issued late on Tuesday.

The release said the state's wider digital governance push now also includes an artificial intelligence-enabled public grievance system, the AWARE decision-support platform, a State Data Lake that brings together government databases, and a set of AI tools for frontline administration and decision-making.

It said the longer-term plan is to move beyond digital service delivery towards what it described as precision governance.

According to the release, bringing services on to WhatsApp has reduced the need for people to visit government offices or use multiple departmental websites by creating a single digital interface between citizens and the state.

"The platform has expanded to offer 1,126 government services across 35 departments, serving 58.2 lakh citizens and recording more than 3.42 crore service sessions," it said.

The next part of the exercise is grievance redressal. Andhra Pradesh has embedded AI across its Public Grievance Redressal System, or AI4PGRS, where citizens can register complaints through text, images or voice using a conversational interface.

Since June 2024, the platform has received more than 17.6 lakh grievances. The release said AI is being used for routing grievances, analytics, assessing response quality and developing standard operating procedures to improve both the speed and quality of grievance resolution.

The AWARE platform, or Advanced Warning and Advisory for Resilient Ecosystem, is being presented as one of the state's major governance initiatives. With 61 live statewide use cases, it brings together weather, hydrology, agriculture, public health, air quality and disaster intelligence on a single platform, allowing departments to move from reactive administration to proactive governance.

The release said some services run through the year, while others are activated during crop cycles, the monsoon or emergencies, giving officers real-time alerts and predictive intelligence.

Supporting these platforms is the State Data Lake, which combines data from across government into one digital platform for real-time analytics, evidence-based policymaking and more responsive service delivery.

The release said 55 databases across 41 departments and autonomous organisations have already been integrated, and AI applications are being built on this shared data infrastructure.

The release said the system has identified 17,547 pension anomalies with an estimated annual savings potential of Rs 84.22 crore. It has also removed 1.61 lakh deceased beneficiaries from Rice Cards, identified nearly 96,000 ineligible beneficiaries under the Jagjeevan Jyothi scheme, and flagged 1.28 lakh duplicate housing sanctions for review.

AI is also being used in frontline administration through the state's AI Acceleration Project. The release said 98 AI use cases have been identified across government, of which 29 have entered statewide production.

These cover public health, agriculture, taxation, policing and citizen grievance management, including tuberculosis risk prediction, crop disease detection, GST fraud detection and AI-enabled CCTV analytics.

For officials, platforms such as RTGS Lens, Revenue One and the Single Search Bar are being used to support administrative decisions. RTGS Lens has integrated 506 departmental workflows across 28 departments, allowing officers to use real-time dashboards and analytics. Revenue One is digitising land and revenue records, with more than 19,000 revenue officials actively using it, while the AI-powered Single Search Bar has assisted users with more than 1.8 lakh government information queries.

The release said the proposed Family Benefit Management System, or FBMS, is intended to make the family rather than the individual the basic unit of welfare delivery. It aims to do this by integrating datasets across departments, creating a unified family database and developing AI-based vulnerability scores to improve the targeting of government schemes.

Over the next three years, the roadmap includes expanding AI across departments, operationalising AI Living Labs, scaling up the State Data Lake, launching AP One as a unified citizen platform and institutionalising AI-enabled governance across public administration. The release added that, if implemented at scale, the effort could offer one of India's most comprehensive models for AI-enabled governance. Overall, the state's digital push now spans citizen services, grievance handling, data integration, administrative tools and welfare planning.