Budhanilkantha Municipality Commits to Enhancing Data-Driven Decision-Making

Budhanilkantha Municipality, with technical assistance from HERD International, Kathmandu Institute of Child Health, and Helping Hands, conducted an orientation for elected representatives on the ongoing efforts to create household folders and develop an urban data hub. The household folders will be informed by a household census in Wards 4 and 7, with social mapping and a health facility survey being used to develop an urban data hub to provide evidence to inform municipal policies, decisions and programs.

The municipality emphasized the critical role of its residents in achieving its development targets. With the increased responsibilities of local governments under federalism, Budhanilkantha municipality has prioritized generation of evidence to formulate health, education, and development programs.

Sharing the plan with elected representatives, HERD International Director Dr. Sushil Chandra Baral informed that census aims to gather data on various aspects, including family structure, demographics, health services, socio-economic status, housing, environmental conditions, vaccination status, and agricultural practices. “This data will be used to create family folders and an urban data hub, which will inform policies and programs related to health, education, infrastructure, and environmental management” he said.

Trained enumerators will visit each household to collect information, ensuring that all personal data is kept confidential. The current phase of the census will cover 1,700 households in Ward 7 and 2,500 households in Ward 4. The mayor urged ward chairs and municipal committee members to support the data collection efforts. He expressed hope that the multisectoral data will guide the annual workplan and budgeting activities. He also informed that the current census is a piloting effort, and will be scaled up in other wards.

At the conclusion of the meeting, ward chairs expressed their commitment to support field researchers to collect data from the households. They also suggested that mobilizing community groups, ward members, and volunteers will help to build rapport with the community members to increase people’s motivation to participate in the census. They were confidenct that this initiative will support improvements in service delivery and support the municipality’s efforts to address challenges related to rapid population growth, health, sanitation, infrastructure, and environmental management.