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.
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Implementation Perspective: ICT Enabled ‘Smart City’ in Developing Countries
‘Smart City’ is one of the most popular jargon of the current time. The political parties have mentioned smart city development in their manifesto to influence the voters. A smart city is defined in a variety of ways in various resources but all of them converge to the same gist ultimately: the smart city integrates ICT(Information and Communication Technology) with various physical devices (sensors, receivers, CCTV cameras) that are connected to the network to optimize the efficiency of city operations and services (through a centralized command center) as well as to connect the citizens (through services). A smart city should have well-managed and ICT-enabled traffic and transportation systems, power plants, water supply networks, waste management, law enforcement, information systems, schools, libraries, hospitals, and other community services. Smart City provides its citizens with a clean and sustainable environment, hassle-free services, and hence a decent quality of life.
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