Miscellaneous
PMO to soon go paperless
The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) will soon dispatch Cabinet meetings’ agenda electronically, an official said on Thursday.Prithvi Man Shrestha
The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) will soon dispatch Cabinet meetings’ agenda electronically, an official said on Thursday.
This move breaks practice of dispatching agenda manually as the PMO expands its digital communication and Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli’s vow to go paperless.
PMO Spokesperson Binod Bahadur Kunwar said, “We aim to dispatch Cabinet meetings’ agenda to ministers electronically in the early days of the new fiscal year beginning mid-July.”
Once the software comes into use, it would reduce paperwork at the PMO substantially. The electronic media would help ministers to keep track of Cabinet’s agenda and decisions, Kunwar said.
The PMO has installed software that enables it to send and receive soft copies to various ministries, he said. Soon citizens too would have access to Cabinet decisions once the system starts. The PMO’s move follows Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli’s warning on May 30 to dismiss any minister who does not know how to use a laptop.
“I have already said in the Council of Ministers meeting that we will make the office paperless within six months. The meeting’s programmes and agenda will be discussed using laptops,” the PM had stated, speaking at the 12th general convention of the Nepal National Teachers Organisation in Kathmandu.
Although the software was installed two years ago at the PMO, successive governments failed to use it.
Currently, after the PM approves Cabinet meeting agenda and then the PMO despatches separate letters to ministers along with all related documents in paper form.
Sending the same documents to all Cabinet ministers consumes a lot of paper. “Each Minster may get from hundred to thousand pages of papers based on agenda of the meeting and their numbers,” said an official at the PMO.
While the PMO is primed to go digital, there is scepticism over ministers’ computer skills.
An official from the PMO’s IT department said they were ready to train ministers, if required.