ArticleNowadays rapid increase of technological environment allows residents to be more
mobile, choose working place, different from one’s place of residence, start a new business or
transfer company to rural areas, thus promoting polycentric development of a territory and
increasing capacity of rural territories. It means that government should think of smart
governance and service provision, providing different government services at one place. From
June 2015 until December 2015, under the concept of improvement of public service system, the
government of the Republic of Latvia established 75 unified state and local government customer
service centres. Service centres operate on a local basis and in accordance with the uniform
principles, provide customer with one place to access multiple public services. The objective of
the present article is to evaluate the necessity and current activity of unified customer service
centres and their contribution to smart governance of the country. The necessity for unified client
service centres in the rural areas were therefore assessed with the analysis of attributable data,
theory on establishment of such centres, and residents’ survey, which showed that a big part of
customers of the present centres are residents of neighbouring towns and cities where the regional
governmental and local institutions are located, but they are attracted by the possibility to receive
all the necessary services at one time