A changing Kirtipur Municipality and the confluence of technology
This year will probably be a test of my adaptiveness.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that my volunteer role was well-defined—in fact, and in the opinion of many a previous and existing volunteer—the job for which many of us were enlisted quickly begins to reveal its tangential nature to the job we find ourselves doing. And I’m told it’s not without its tests of resilience along the way.
It’s maybe a good thing then that I persevered with my foray into international development despite my rustiness in some of the requirements that were listed in the sprawling checklist of desired skills. I’ll need to conduct an intensive refresher if these fringes of my software career ever resurface in the course of my duties. But so far the goals of improving the information communication and technology (ICT) within Kirtipur Municipality goes, it has been a dazzling exercise in trying to find order amongst the chaos (as one fellow volunteer has coined).
Kirtipur Municipality is in the primordial throws of a governmental system that has recently been enacted in Nepal. The edifice of this transformation is best exhibited by our new municipality building (pictured above)—which has been in a state of perpetual construction for a while now (years by some accounts). The excitement about what lies ahead for a newly federated Nepal is captured by the buoyant proclamation that we’re five months away from the completion of this new office, a certitude offered by our mayor upon our first visit to the site.
In the meantime, we’re occupying a community centre at the top of the Ring Road that loops though Kirtipur, signposted with now-fading prints declaring the presence of a municipal body. There are some annexes within the building that are designated for a particular arm, such as the Building Permits section, and the Accounts department; however later additions to the staff (such as myself) are at all times both assigned to a desk yet somewhat transient, as the scarcity of seats for employees means a slow game of musical chairs unfolds.
The office is dimly lit; and more than once I’ve had to be reunited with my desk after a well-meaning but opportunistic colleague reclaimed the space for the sharing of tea or a place to hide from the rigmarole of admin duties. There’s no hard feelings on my part, so I join in for tea, but insist on the persistence of my claim to the desk—perhaps to their chagrin.
In my first week, I was presented with the the municipality’s Personnel Information System, a web application used to record employee data for the municipality. What was striking about this exchange was the handover of a USB stick containing the application’s source code— a method of sharing code that I’ve long abandoned as it makes consistency almost impossible to maintain amongst teammates. I’ve since learend that source code version control tools such as git and cloud-based code hosting platforms are non-existent within the organisation.
Here I was, anxious that I’d be caught having to feverishly reacquaint myself with those technologies with which I was rusty, and instead my first priority has become establishing some basic processes for approaching software projects for the organisation. I can consider this as the first detour from the task of building out exciting new software applications for the municiplaity.
I’m immediately tasked with debugging an errant Edit staff details function within the Personnel Information System, one that quietly discards any data you enter upon submission. It’s a trivial task, but right there is my opportunity to introduce some new ways of doing things, and enforcing a processes for software development. The issues of security, privacy, extensibility, maintainability and especially the potential to introduce some automaticity in deployment should naturally follow on from there, to the benefit of future ICT Officers and visiting consultants. This is good as it gives me something to work on in the background, in between the more ambitious IT projects that the municipality engages in.
In my fourth week here I’m told that the mayor is assembling a panel of library and computer scientists from Tribhuvan and Kathmandu universities, along with IT industry experts and illustrious school teachers from the community. To orient this group, I’ve been asked to present the municipality’s goals for an public library which has had trouble getting traction in the past. I’m nervous about the fine line I’ll have to walk between the earnest desires of the municipality in the erudition of our community, and keeping within the realms of possibility for a country whose priorities include much more basic needs than a digitally-savvy library. The big picture thinking might be fixed, but we’ll need to be adaptive to the constraints that reveal themselves along the way.
Where technology comes into this project is the opportunity to install computer workstations at this public library for internet access and general computing use. Many of Nepal’s government services are moving online at a pace that outstrips the rate of digital literacy amongst those who need these services the most, especially amidst the older populations and those that are physically and or mentally impaired.
I deliver what I think are the obvious solutions to the problem, painfully aware that I’ve added no original thought beyond having simply spent time in public libraries back home in Sydney. Contained in our proposal are free community workshops run by industry professionals teaching basic computer skills to the general public, free wifi and internet access around the municipality, and the hiring of staff who possess the adequate computer literacy to help people navigate and apply for municipality services online.
We must have done a decent job, as following the presentations one expert after another approached the lectern to volley their advice about why this project is important for the community, and how we might best realise it. I’ve been involved with some fairly rewarding projects before (especially whilst working for not-for-profit clients and for our public broadcasters back home), but there’s something about this particular inauguration that makes me truly hopeful that we can affect a positive change.
The budding humanitarian in me is intoxicated following the event, but the long walk home affords me time to reground myself to the reality that things work a little differently here. And like our eventual municipality building (which I’m hoping might one day house this library), things have a way of taking a little longer to actualise here, and often finds a course that defies the folly of planning for grandiosity. Nonetheless, if we can push forward and adapt as challenges arise, I’d say we’re moving in the right direction—and I’m thrilled to be a part of that effort.
