IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

There are benefits of moving towards smart cities even if it is partial and applied only to selected services such as traffic and parking.

In the past two decades, the concept of smart city has been gaining popularity globally. While several cities such as Seoul, Singapore, Taipei, Barcelona, Chicago and Hong Kong have been implementing elements of smart city planning and design concepts, some city planners and civic leaders are also speaking about the benefits of adopting smart city notions for Nepal.

Minister of Information and Communications, Mohan Bahadur Basnet has returned home on Sunday after taking part in the World Telecommunication Development Conference (WTDC) in Buenos Aires, Argentine.

Talking to journalists at the Tribhuvan International Airport upon arrival home, Minister Basnet said the conference held important discussions on the new technological advances in the telecommunication sector in various countries, successes, and exchange of practices.

In recent years, Nepal has been hit by an alarming rise in devastating cyberattacks on critical infrastructure and data systems across the country. Just in the last few months, major hospitals like Bir Hospital and Grande International Hospital suffered data breaches, compromising sensitive patient information.

Banks like Nabil Bank and Nepal Mega Investment Bank were targeted by cybercriminals looking to steal funds. Telecom providers like Ncell and Nepal Telecom had their networks disrupted by DDoS (distributed denial of service) attacks.

The government has expedited preparations with an objective of distributing electronic ID by the end of the FY from any one constituency of the country having internet services. It has presented the framework for distribution of ID with thumb print to 100,000 citizens as a pilot project with aid from the Asian Development Bank at the Council of Ministers for approval. The National ID Management Centre will distribute ID within the next five years in three phases, centre’s executive director Narendra Dahal said.

The first Constituent Assembly elections in Nepal, held in 2008, were an important milestone in Nepal’s political history for they let the people’s representatives write the country’s primary law on their own. But, for Neil Kantha Uprety, an election commissioner then, they were more important because they let the public use electronic voting machines (EVMs) for the first time.

“That was a pilot project, and that proved successful,” Uprety says, “We were excited about its prospects in Nepal.”

Usually the public Enterprises are established for production and marketing of fundamental goods and services in a suitable rate. The provision of services by public enterprises is a common practice in Europe and elsewhere. Usually the practice is highly significant in communist countries.

Speaking at a program organised in the capital Shah revealed that his ministry will apply ICT (Information and Communication Technology) in modus operandi of sectors such as the parliamentary system and the judiciary system to propel the country towards the path of e-governance. “The government will slowly embrace the concept of e-parliament and e-judiciary,” he added.

According to published reports, the Nepal government plans to connect 25 district hospitals, most of them located in the remote and inaccessible Himalayas, to specialists in the capital Kathmandu via satellite uplink. Those specialists, in turn, will be linked up with "super-specialists" working in 12 hospitals across India, to give them access to further medical expertise when needed.

Nepal's caretaker Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal Friday inaugurated the telemedicine centre at Patan Hospital in Lalitpur, set up with an Indian assistance of nearly 4.8 crore Nepalese rupees, under the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) project.

India is fully funding the project to set up telemedicine network in the entire SAARC region as part of the assurance given by Manmohan Singh, a statement by the Indian embassy in Kathmandu said.

At around 10 am, the telemedicine centre of SGPGIMS hooked on with the Patan medical institute in Nepalese capital Kathmandu and at the same time with PGI Chandigarh establishing a closer link between the three medical institutes that would cater to the patients in the time of crisis.

SGPGIMS had earlier established such a link with Holy Family Hospital in Rawalpindi in Pakistan through high bandwidth ISDN. It is also in the process of helping out the Afghanistan government, which has sought its assistance for a medical institute in Kabul. In fact, the institute with 50 seats would be constructed with the help of Indian government.

Governor Narasimhan explained the Prime Minister of Nepal on various eGovernance initiatives implemented by the Telangana State government.

Governor ESL Narasimhan hosted a dinner in honour of the visiting Prime Minister of Nepal, Sher Bahadur Deuba, his wife Dr. Arzu Rana Deuba and the entourage comprising 40 members at Taj Falaknuma Palace on Friday.

Speaking at the ICT Conference 2011 organized by Computer Association of Nepal (CAN) here on Wednesday, they also stressed on the need to implement various concepts like e-village, e-library and telemedicine with focus on rural sector to bridge existing digital divide.

Speaking at a panel discussion on ´Building e-Nepal: Prospects and Challenges´, lawmaker Rajendra Khetan encouraged entrepreneurs to work with competitiveness, quality and access in mind. He further suggested them not to look for government assistance on everything.

Chang See-Jeong, Vice-president of KOICA, is scheduled to attend the inaugural ceremony of the Government Integrated Data Center (GIDC) in Singha Durbar.

According to a report in The Himalayan Times, the Nepali government fears the new system will add to the cost of spiralling visa fees for its people who are seeking employment in Malaysia.

In this recent statement given in Kathmandu, Minister of Education (MoE) Madhav Prasad Paudel cast his vision of Nepal’s future. He also added, “The gulf between the rich and the poor is widening due to the current education system. The government should focus on ICT (Information and Communications Technology Education) to narrow down the gap between the rich and the poor.”

The MoE mandated the ICT in Education five-year Master Plan in March 2013. This ICT in Education Plan hopes to provide the necessary ICT skills to students, increase access to learning material, and encourage the effectiveness and efficiency of education governance.

They want to replicate in Nepal the rapid economic growth, administrative efficiency and increasing opportunities achieved by some developing nations through ICT.

OCC, an agency under the Ministry of Science and Technology (MoST), has the authority to issue digital certificates which contains a public key and identity of the owner.

Digital signature is an electronic signature produced by Public Key Infrastructure (PKI). It consists of a pair of keys -- private and public. Private key is known to the user only and it helps to encrypt the message which helps to maintain privacy and security of messages or transactions. Similarly, public key which is known to other party, particularly the receiver, is used to decrypt the message.

The department launched this facility under the e-governance initiative for the public after the number of people holding fake driving licenses went up, reported China's Xinhua news agency cited a local daily on Tuesday.

The Prime minister said the service will prove beneficial for the rural population as it would provide comfortable and easy excess to health services to the people living in remote districts.

It has been difficult to take quality and affordable health services by establishing infrastructure due to geographical and technical problem, he said inaugurating the telemedicine service and SAARC telemedicine programme in the capital.