KATHMANDU, NOVEMBER 25

The Ministry of Federal Affairs and General Administration has issued the ‘Local Level Institutional Capacity Self-evaluation Procedure-2020’ to identify strengths and weaknesses of local bodies by assessing their work procedures and achievements for the purpose of making them competitive and more effective.

The thematic areas of self-evaluation of local units include 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.

As per the procedure, each of the thematic areas will have separate indicators for self-evaluation. Mark per indicator has been fixed at 1.

Poor performance, moderate performance and excellent performance will get 0, 0.5 and 1 respectively.

“All local levels shall adopt the self-evaluation process as stated in this procedure.

The concerned departments, divisions and sections shall be involved in self-evaluation of the thematic areas. The chief administrative officer shall designate a focal person, and the concerned departments, divisions and sections shall provide the results of indicators determined for each thematic area to the focal person,” the procedure reads.

The focal person consolidates the results of self-evaluation of the local level and submits it to the chief administrative officer. “Then the chief administrative officer presents consolidated results of self-evaluation at the meeting of the executive, which is the final authority to determine the final results with scores. The executive shall publish the final results of self-evaluation on the website of the concerned local level and post it on the notice board,” it says.

The final results shall also 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, it requires the local levels to complete their self-evaluation by mid-January of each fiscal.

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 the local levels which are found to be 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 the local governments.