CAOs told to implement new capacity evaluation procedure

KATHMANDU, DECEMBER 15

The Ministry of Federal Affairs and General Administration today issued a circular to chief administrative officers of all 753 local levels, directing them to duly implement the ‘Local Level Institutional Capacity Self-evaluation Procedure-2020’ and send results of their institutional capacity to the MoFAGA.

The Government of Nepal had recently published the procedure to identify strengths and weaknesses of local governments by assessing their work procedures and achievements as per the constitution, Local Government Operations Act and, Financial Procedures and Fiscal Responsibility Act for the purpose of making them more competitive and effective.

The MoFAGA told the CAOs that the thematic areas of self-evaluation of local units should comprise governance arrangements, organisation and administration, annual budget and planning management, fiscal and financial management, public service delivery, judicial performance, physical infrastructure, social inclusion, environment protection and disaster management, and coordination and collaboration.

Each of the thematic areas will have separate indicators for self-evaluation. The mark per indicator has been fixed at 1. Poor performance, moderate performance and excellent performance will get 0, 0.5 and 1 respectively.

The procedure requires the MoFAGA to develop software for data entry, storage, security, presentation and disclosure of self-evaluation results in the form of a report.

“The MoFAGA shall also prepare a consolidated report comprising the self-evaluation results of all 753 local levels and conduct capacity development programmes for such local governments which are poor in results,” it says.

The MoFAGA will officially declare the name of meritorious local levels and take the results as the basis for fiscal transfer to local governments.

“All local levels shall adopt the self-evaluation process as stated in the procedure. The departments, divisions and sections concerned shall be involved in self-evaluation of the thematic areas. The CAO shall designate a focal person, and the concerned departments, divisions and sections shall provide the results of the indicators determined for each thematic area to the focal person,” the procedure reads.

As per the procedure, the final results shall be sent to the concerned district coordination committee, Office of the Chief Minister and Council of Ministers of the province and the MoFAGA.

According to the procedure, the local levels are required to complete their self-evaluation by mid-January of each fiscal.