Public service delivery is an important issue where the citizens receive service from the government on various aspects like company registration, passport, immigration, birth/death registration, citizenship, transport registration, license registration, land registration and house building, tax payment, etc. These are the essential services that every government must provide to its citizens. In the case of Nepal, receiving these services is tedious and time-consuming. Moreover, the Lack of transparency of these services is promoting corruption. The shortcomings in the methods of service delivery of the government of Nepal are raising the level of dissatisfaction and reducing the trust towards the government. There have been a lot of discussions going on in the formation of good governance. The central thought behind all these discussions is the same: fast, easy, and transparent delivery of services ensures trust and satisfaction of citizens which ultimately leads to an increase in governance index and other various indicators of the nation. Digitization is a proven practice for service delivery after the development of Information and Communication Technology. Analysis of the pros and cons of various sectors like banking, education, commerce, etc indicate that the shifting towards digital service brings betterment in all the concerned aspects. Also, the study of the governance of developed countries suggests that trustworthiness of services and satisfaction level of service consumers increase noticeably after introducing digitization in service delivery. Several Practices for the digitization of government services are going on in Nepal as well. But being practiced by individual bodies of the government separately, these digitization lack consistency, standardization, and synchronization. This kind of digitization needs to be planned and managed properly and addressed timely to prevent wastage of time and money in huge amounts.
Office of Company Registrar (OCR) is one of the bodies of the government of Nepal that registers maintains the records of companies and their status in Nepal. In OCR, an online system has been developed and implemented for registering companies and storing the necessary documents at different intervals of time thus reducing the existing tedious paperwork.
Inland Revenue Department (IRD) is another important body of the Nepal government which collects and keeps records on the internal revenue of the organization. People can submit their financial status and revenue details online and can edit, download and manage their documents. Closing a company needs to submit an application to the OCR which will be forwarded to IRD to ensure whether all the taxes are cleared by the company or not. OCR intern gets notified about the status of taxes of that particular company. This process seems tedious, involves a lot of manual processes, and is time-consuming. Both of these bodies have their own systems and technically sharing their data leads to efficient service delivery. So, why are these processes not made easier? Department of Foreign Employment (DofE) is a body of government that grants permissions for foreign employment. They have invested a huge budget for their own automated (digital) system that reduces human error and increases fast processing. Why the digital records that have been collected in the passport department has not been accessed for cross verification for human trafficking? The synchronization of two government services for verification and validation is possible with the help of digitization.
Department of Immigration is another related body that deals with the outgoing and incoming people (National/International). They also have their own independent digital system. We can see two desks at immigration at Tribhuvan International Airport; one is from DoFE called “Labor Desk” and another is “Immigration Desk”. Those who are going for foreign employment, have to be scanned through both of them. The sharing of digitized data to enhance the service is also possible here.
Nepal Election Commission (NEC) has almost all the digital data of citizens eligible for voting, that has been collected carefully and precisely. Can’t it be shared with other government organizations that are using digital systems? Like licenses department, National ID, home ministry, security agencies, and other related government bodies. With this, when a government body updates information about citizens, it will easily be updated and shared among other related bodies. This will make the concept of a single-window system possible.
These are the few representative examples of data sharing that can be done effectively and inefficient way to enhance government services. Disaster Management is another sector where the presence of connected digitized government service would be a blessing not only for information sharing but also for better management of disaster events. At this stage, our government is in the verification and validation of the actual victims of the recent earthquake which could have been done in an easier and quicker way had these services been planned and digitized previously. It not only reduces the time of output but also reduces extra workload, cost, and time of government processes. Although data should be safe and sharing may lead to high risk it is possible to make it secure.
Appropriate use of information and communication technology (ICT) for delivering services to the public ensures improvement in efficiency, accountability, transparency, and reducing bribes in the service delivery. According to an analysis done by ADB, the use of ICT in developing countries is very much beneficial and is a crucial part of the wide-scale of deployment. For the use of ICT, there are various factors like human resources, infrastructure, education, research, structures and policy of the organization, experts of related fields, and so on. These are the major factors to make the ICT systems reliable and livable in government organizations also. The field of ICT has been constantly evolving and the government of Nepal should have a strategic plan to use ICT in its services else failure in the imminent future is inevitable. According to the Nepal Telecom Authority, around 50% population of Nepal has access to ICT and the Internet. The rate of use of ICT services by the general public is emerging day by day and the need and usage of ICT services in government bodies and agencies are increasing at bigger rates.
Each Government office is developing its own digital system allocating a huge amount of time and cost. Current trends for the implementation of a digitized system in various government bodies is to outsource to a national or foreign company on the contract. There is no government body that monitors, audits, and controls the quality of the digital systems thus developed. To exchange data and to support the Government to Government (G2G) model, all the government digital systems should be scalable, uniform, and maintain predefined standards. A government body needs to be formed for the control and audit of quality, standard, and uniformity of digital systems being used in various sectors of government. This also reduces scenarios when a government body has to pay a huge amount for the design and development of a very small software system in the lack of knowledge or for the purpose of individual benefits.
Inputs and Outputs are not the only issues in the IT system but many things have to be taken care of while designing and implementing the system to make it reliable. Current trends of digital system usage of the government of Nepal are that a single officer is responsible to handle all the aspects of the system. But the fact is that depending on the nature and complexity of the system, a team of experts is needed. So to address above mentioned scenarios, proper mobilization of human resources through separate government employment, policy and structure are needed as ICT is booming as an important and specialized issue for good governance. This is the time of technology and ultimately we all have to adopt the use of technology in governance like developed countries do. So, the existing policies need to be reviewed and upgraded. This should be done by the experts in the concerned field and the government. One of the solutions to the above-mentioned issues is the formation of the Central IT Department which will have the responsibility of preparing various levels of ICT human resources and their proper mobilization. Its responsibility will also include digitization and management of the digital system in all the government bodies. This solution ensures data sharing among government bodies, scalability, uniformity, standard quality, and security of digital system which lead to better service delivery to the public.
Government is the largest provider of information and services that are important for the citizens. Methods of service delivery have not changed for decades, making them inefficient and non-transparent. There is sufficient evidence that well-designed e-governance projects with process reforms, target enhanced transparency and accountability, reduce the discretion of civil servants, enhance efficiency, and can lower corruption. However, very few such projects have been implemented to their utmost potential. There is a need to accelerate the pace of implementation of digitized governance and build capacity to reform the process of service delivery.