IfG.CC - The Potsdam eGovernment Competence Center

Chandragiri municipality has intensified its bid to prepare ‘municipal profile’ by adopting GPS-GIS system. With the completion of this task, municipal residents would receive public services through online mechanisms.

Chandragiri mayor Ghanashyam Giri said, “The task of preparing municipal profile through GPS-GIS system has come to a final stage. It would help develop Chandragiri a smart city. Municipal residents would receive services online with the accomplishment of the task. Locals would also get information about what type of development is needed in which areas within the municipality”.

The Health Ministry has begun formal efforts to expand mHealth and eHealth services, a popular term explaining use of mobile phones and electronic tools in healthcare, by its health facilities.

In the first phase, a mobile application and SMS service are being piloted in Baglung and Ilam districts to track the pregnant mothers for regular antenatal visits.

According to the hospital source, the service has been beneficial for the people of 25 districts in the mountainous and hilly regions.

The service has proved a great relief to the rural people who have been deprived of health facilities due to many reasons including the lack of resources, said Dr Kamal Raj Dhital.

On January 17, 2011, the Madhav Kumar Nepal-led government had endorsed an initial draft of the NID bill which was floated to the cabinet by the Ministry of Home Affairs (MoHA).

Prospective homeowners in Kathmandu can now apply for a building construction permit online, as city authority formally launched electronic building permit system on Sunday.

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Federal Affairs and Local Development Kamal Thapa inaugurated the new system, which is an e-governance initiative of Kathmandu Metropolitan City for effective implementation of National Building Code and urban settlement management. Earlier, it was being run as a pilot project in 14 wards of the metropolis.

Addressing a workshop organised to mark the World Telecommunication and Information Society Day (WTISD) here on Friday, Paudel called on to bring projects for laying optical fibre along highways and feeder roads. “The government will arrange the required funds,” he said.

The Finance Ministry has committed to provide Rs 10 million to set up each of the offices, Lila Mani Paudel, home secretary, told mediapersons.

Firstly, we will work on infrastructure and system in those districts and gradually choose the best persons for the offices to set an example for others to implement, added Paudel. However he said the ministry is yet to finalise the names of chosen districts.

The selection comes a day after the ministry approved a proposal to put in place an effective service mechanism at all DAOs.

The selected districts, which already have basic infrastructure, will be connected with a network of offices and have facilities required to make them gender-friendly, cooperative and service seeker-oriented. Home Secretary Leela Mani Paudyal said they have collected suggestions on model DAOs at regional security meetings.

If things go as per plan, broadband service will be available nationwide at a cheaper cost, including in rural areas within five years. All village development committees (VDCs) will have wired or wireless broadband connection by the end of 2020.

This is one of the targets set by the government in the National Broadband Policy. The policy, focused on broadband infrastructure development and increasing access to high-speed internet services, was endorsed by the Cabinet in April and Nepal Telecommunications Authority (NTA) made it public recently.

Mobile internet service still dominates domestic internet service market, according to a report by the telecom regulator.

Mobile internet, sub-broadband speed connections, accounted for 3.144 million of the total 3.276 million internet users until mid-April, according to latest Management Information Service (MIS) report of Nepal Telecommunications Authority.

Ncell has strongholds in internet users with a total of 1.95 million people accessing the internet via its GPRS service, whereas its rival Nepal Telecom has 1.13 million GPRS/CDMA users without ADSL users and UTL counted 54,175 users in its CDMA lines.

The electronically registered electoral roll with photographs, finger prints and biometrics is expected to be more authentic and credible for future elections.

The EC was able to register the 9.44 million eligible Nepalis (who are 18 years old or above) over a period of eight months.

The National Identity Management Centre (NIDMC) established under the ministry to deal with political and technical issues related to the project.

“The NID bill required to set the legal framework for the project has been gathering dust at the Ministry of Law after Law Minister rejected the bill saying it has controversial clauses related to citizenship in the Tarai. The Detailed Progress Report (DPR) has also been delayed,” said the source.

After almost a year of wrangling with the Ministry of Law and Justice over approval of the draft bill of National Identity (NID) Card, the National Identity Management Centre (NIDMC) has finally sent a proposal to the Cabinet for the NID Act.

The multimillion-dollar NID project aims to provide multipurpose biometric machine readable cards to all citizens in place of handwritten citizenship cards.

The service was resumed after equipment was installed at the district hospital by the government. Although equipment of hundreds of thousands of rupees has been used, the hospital has started services with the ADSL internet service of Nepal Telecom.

The National Information Technology Roadmap 2014-2019, released to a limited circle by the Department of Information Technology, is a fantastic document. It is a wishlist of 85 activities to be executed by government ministries and agencies in the next five years, and if completed, will transform the way the Nepali state delivers its services and responds to our requirements. In the same period, the Roadmap states, the IT sector will be among the top ten contributors to the GDP. The writers of the document want us to believe that the Roadmap will help switch the slow, chaotic, analogue bureaucratic ensemble into a fast, efficient, digital government. But the government itself is unprepared for such a revolution, as indicated by it placing 164th in the world—a drop by 11 positions from 2010 to 2012—on the UN e-readiness survey.

Six international firms have submitted their bid to bag the much touted national identity card project to the Ministry of Home Affairs on Wednesday.

According to the National Identity Card Management Center of the ministry, evaluation process of these firms will begin from Thursday that will take at least one month to complete.

The Appathon is expected to develop applications that offer solutions to the problems that city dwellers face. As Kathmandu has been nominated as the first city for the launching of Solutions for Cities program, App demo programs will be held here from March 14-16 as a part of the preparation.

The consultant, supposed to submit the report last week, left for Canada after submitting a draft document for discussion.

According to NIDMC sources, Kohli had wanted to know if EC’s data can be used in the card and inquired about estimated investment for the project.

The use of Information Communication Technology (ICT) in education is growing in demand around the world. This is because revolutionary developments in computer technology and the internet have changed the way people live and work. However, Nepal’s education sector still has long way to go with ICT integrated approaches to educating pupils. A big ICT fete just concluded in Kathmandu. The organisers also conducted an ICT conference. Such fetes, organised on a yearly basis, facilitate the purchase of IT hardware and software, but very few people are specifically concerned about the use of ICT in education.

Chiniya Lama, assistant health worker at the centre, said that 20 cancer patients are availing themselves of the service that only requires a working computer and Internet connection. “We got started six months ago. Now, the patients like Surya Laxi can have direct interaction with the doctors in the capital, explain the problems they are having and get the right medical advice,” he said.