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e-Governance Project ConceptRUPP, while in the process of strengthening good governance and urban development brought the concept of implementing e-Governance. Since e-Governance is one of the major components under ICT for strengthening good governance, RUPP jointly with the Bharatpur municipality have conceptualized the e-governance and shared its Programme concept to the local Chamber of Commerce and Industries (CCI). Only after addressing the suggestions from CCI and ensuring their support in e-governance, RUPP and the municipality decided to launch the program. The private sector is scaling up the network of cyber-cafe as per the need of situation in order to provide e-service to public. The e-governance has been launched also in coordination with the Ministry of Local Development, Government of Nepal. RUPP has supported all 12-partner municipalities to establish an Urban Information Center with well-trained staff permanently deputed to the Center. The staff was trained in line with the Municipality ’s commitment to e-governance. Staffs have been deputed to operationalize the e-governance unit of the municipality. Similarly, RUPP has also established a well-set Human Resource Development Center (HRDC), which, presently, has been strengthening to cater training and orientation regarding good governance and poverty alleviation.Goal and ObjectivesForeseeing the benefits of a merger of good governance with ICT, RUPP has helped municipalities to implement e-governance with the prime objective of strengthening its efforts to good urban governance focusing on strong information base, and delivery of urban services through ICT. Beside this, the other objectives of the e-governance program are to:
Issues that are addressedThe e-governance was initiated as an innovative approach to support good urban governance through ICT with the following three main contributions:
One of the key issues that has been tried to address is improved service delivery for public. For this, the municipality has helped its citizens to minimize the number of their visits to the municipality to get their jobs done. Similarly, the other intention is to reduce the time required to get a job done, which ultimately reduces the cost. The other issue addressed through this e-governance program is information dissemination. The objective of this is to disseminate information that is not only useful for an ordinary citizen for his/her daily contact with the Municipality, but also for other purposes, such as planning and monitoring, awareness creation on different issue like HIV/AIDS and provide information on municipality to community based organization, line agencies, NGOs and INGOs. Addressing the issue of paying attention to public voices, the e-governance portal has provision for comments, suggestion, online polling and discussion forum to ensure public participation in planning and decision making process.
Project DesignPre Project Activities:Bharatpur Municipality on the way of strengthening good urban governance organized a workshop in order to explore the ideas and suggestions from different stakeholders on the use of ICT as a tool for efficient urban service delivery. On the basis of suggestions and decisions made on the workshop, the municipality prepared "Pre Feasibility cum Need Assessment Report ” on how the ICT can be used to improve the existing system of the municipality, urban service delivery and participation of public in planning and decision making process. Project Activities:
Realizing the importance and necessity of e-Governance in Nepal the Right Honorable Prime Minister Mr. Lokendra B. Chand has officially launched the e-Governance portal on January 10, 2003.
Post Project Activities:After the launching of the portal, Bharatpur municipality is routinely monitoring the use and effectiveness of the e-Governance portal. To further strengthen good governance within the municipality, RUPP is in the process of hiring a consultant for the System Analysis on the Automation of Internal Process of the municipality. By making Bharatpur municipality a pioneer on implementing e-Governance in Nepal, RUPP has scaled up the nation towards the path of e-Democracy. Assessment of performance and key results of the initiativeSome tangible outcomes of the projects have already begun to surface up. One of the immediate results of the program is an overwhelming response from the public as until now some six thousand people have visited the web site. Similarly, more than hundred forms have been downloaded and submitted forms online. Although the numbers mentioned may seem too small, but in the context of Nepal, where there no more than 50,000 email and internet users and there are only three Personal Computers (PCs) per 1000 people, these numbers by no means are insignificant. On top of this, a large number of comments, suggestion, and debate have been pouring through the portal. As a result of all these, some replacement of a long queue within the premises of the Municipality by increasing number of clients on local cyber-cafes has been realized.
A well-structured web-site containing information on the organizational structure, administration, statuary provision, important decisions, audit reports, citizen charter, and strategic vision of the municipality has been working as a window of information and helping to increase transparency in the municipal activities. Similarly, availability of legislative information and different online forms has not only helped public to save both the travel cost and time but also reduced workload in the municipality. Now the basic municipal services such as birth registration, death registration, marriage registration and migration certificate have been delivered through the portal. Furthermore, more and more people are lodging their comments, opinions and suggestion through the portal and the municipality on its part has established a mechanism to incorporate these into its respective section. As a consequence of this, not only public participation on municipal planning and activities is increasing through the portal but also comments, opinions and suggestions have compelled the municipality to realize its accountability in respective areas. Thus, an overall impact of e-governance so far has been in support of good urban governance. This e-governance, launched by the Bharatpur municipality with support from RUPP / UNDP - a project with objective of poverty reduction through good governance, has indeed realized some achievements in major fronts of good governance particularly in participation, transparency, efficiency and effectiveness; and accountability. The project has been a boon especially to cyber-cafes, Non-Governments Organizations (NGOs), consultants and line agencies in terms of utilization of the web site. After the launching of the portal, cyber-cafes have experienced a boom in their business. Similarly, NGO, consultants and line agencies have felt their work cut off, as they no longer need to go to the municipality for data or any other information. Bharatpur Municipality, being the first municipality to launch e-governance in Nepal, the impacts of e-governance have been keenly watched by donors, other local governments and the central government both from within the country and outside of the Kingdom. Encouraging from the success of e-governance of the Bharatpur municipality, RUPP is providing technical support to replicate e-governance in remaining partner municipalities. In the same line, the Ministry of Local Development is also encouraged with the success of e-governance in Bharatpur and has shown its commitment by creating an enabling environment for the replication of e-governance.Aligned with the IT Policy of Nepal published in the year 2000, RUPP's initiatives in the area of e-Governance is in a way groundbreaking initiatives in that such strategically focused application of ICT's embedded with on-going development model hitherto did not exist in Nepal. These are at best entry-level activities, which have nevertheless been able to generate some important lessons with wider policy implications. More specifically, the initiatives have resulted in the following: - Political will and commitment from bureaucrats and local authorities is a must.
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