Nepal's federalism brought unprecedented authority and autonomy to local governments (LGs), empowering them to design and implement their own vision of governance. This decentralisation, while constitutionally sound, has inadvertently created a fragmented and opportunistic landscape for e-governance. The motivation for good governance through e-governance has penetrated the local level way before the bureaucratic mechanism and structures required for its adoption. In the absence of coordinated national frameworks and technical oversight, the freedom to adopt digital systems has led to the mushrooming of isolated, duplicative and often unsustainable systems across local levels.

This vision of electronic good governance was laid out by the E-governance masterplan, 2006 (revised 2015). The Digital Nepal Framework 2019 (revised 2025 Draft) painted the sectoral strategy for digital technology adoption. The ICT Policy, 2015 was another supposed landmark from the government that accepted the notion of technology for good governance. The Good Governance (Management and Operation) Act, 2008 itself concurs with the potential of information technology and endorsed the use of ICT for administrative practices.

These makeshift documents set the stage for adoption and acted as a great motivator for newly formed local government and technocratic opportunists to rush the development of independent systems in the name of electronic governance.

While the approach spurred some digitalisation at the sub-national level, it created long-term sustainability challenges. Infrastructure like servers and domains was rarely procured locally, depleting federal resources and increasing reliance on federal data centres. This dependency keeps the sub-national level scraping for infrastructural crumbs from the federal government. The proliferation of systems has only grown over the years, further straining the infrastructure. The issue is exacerbated by the lack of a scaling mechanism. Although local governments have specific needs, many solutions are replicable. Yet, technology adoption under 'cooperative' federalism remains opportunistic, hindering scalability.

Though the Ministry of Federal Affairs and General Administration (MoFAGA) is responsible for LG operation and governance, it lacks the expertise and resources to scrutinise piloted solutions, develop the required legal infrastructure and scale it to all relevant local levels. The gap becomes apparent when we observe similar purpose systems being implemented independently by vendors under different aliases. Such duplication not only produces resource wastage but further exacerbates the interoperability challenges.

The burgeoning of such technocracy through minimalist technology adoption may have produced similar results, but the complexity bias in technocracy prefers procurement of complex systems. Under the procurement law, software development, defined as consultancy service, has immature rates for labour, or cost estimation methods. The procurement regulation calls upon the relevant ministry, the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology (MoCIT), to establish methods and tools for such procurement planning.

To standardise Government Enterprise Architecture, a comprehensive list of artifacts has been developed to support procurement, planning, implementation, management and operations. On the other hand, the Office of the Auditor General has developed the Information System Audit Directive to provide guidance to OAGN auditors on auditing of Information System. While these tools are aimed at improving the quality of Information System procurement and adoption, they rarely penetrate beyond the federal level. This lack of penetration of key toolkits weakens the monitoring and evaluation of e-governance system procurement and has been playing to the advantage of technology consultants contributing to this downward spiral.

Federal technology adoption is relatively mature, with systems like the Vital Event Registration System, SuTRA, PAMS and LISA effectively integrated into business processes and extended to sub-national levels. However, their enforcement reveals social injustices. Digitalisation has shifted queues from government offices to local stationery shops, where free online forms are printed at a cost to communities. While the government promotes digital adoption, users are being left behind, deepening inequality. Without ensuring minimum infrastructure access, the rush toward e-solutions by local governments will only widen this divide.

Nepal's e-governance journey, while driven by an ambitious vision and well-intended decentralisation, is facing a systemic challenge. National policies articulate the importance of digital transformation but miss on realities and capacities of local governance. This absence of cooperative frameworks, technical standards, scaling mechanisms and capacity-building efforts results in a technocratic playground where vendors and consultants capitalise.

Instead of a harmonised digital transformation, Nepal's sub-national e-governance ecosystem is now riddled with inconsistencies, inefficiencies and increasing digital inequity. The government established the E-Governance commission in hopes of improving coordination and interoperability of the government system. However, systematic unpacking of the federal vision of e-governance, along with development of minimal infrastructure, capacity and constraints, is necessary. To reclaim the promise of digital transformation befitting the constitutional dream of cooperative federalism, Nepal must urgently align its federal structure with a shared digital governance vision – one that is inclusive, accountable, replicable and sustainable at every level.