Sanjaya Singh Thapa

Creating a searchable digital library for Nepal’s Ministry of Health and Population had to start at the very beginning.  For MLI’s knowledge management consultant Sanjaya Singh Thapa, that meant setting up an office with an adequate Internet connection. “Right now, Internet is not as good in the government sector as is available to the public,” he said, “The whole setting up of the office was a challenge.”

The goal of the digital library project was to create a framework for an effective centralized information system accessible to policy makers, donors and the general public. It would promote learning and build national consensus on health sector policy options for scaling up services.

To help the process, MLI facilitated a peer-learning teleconference with the National Primary Healthcare Development Agency (NPHCDA) of Nigeria. Having already completed the preliminary steps of developing a system to meet the information needs of national, state and local health care leaders, NPHCDA was able to offer advice and lessons learned to Nepal.

After Thapa had a functioning office, he tackled the task of collecting the documents needed from various stakeholders. In identifying papers for inclusion, Thapa relied on Dr. Baburam Marasini, chief of the Health Sector Reform unit, who led the project. Thapa, in consultation with Dr. Marasini, also created a way to categorize the documents. “Dr. Marasini was like the digital library before I got here,” Thapa said of the Health Sector Reform Chief.  While hard copies of many documents were housed in a central library, others, including health policies, reports and guidelines, languished in file cabinets throughout the Ministry, remembered sometimes only by Dr. Marasini and those who drafted them.

At first, some officials resisted sharing. “In the beginning they were reluctant to give me the information. It was like knowledge was power. I had to time and again explain to people what I was doing. Otherwise, I was like an intruder there,” Thapa said.

His persistence paid off.  Thapa was particularly proud of hunting down a government mental health policy that had been drafted, but then lost. On one of his collection rounds, with help of a Ministry staff Thapa found it. “People had been looking for years,” he said.

Eventually, as the library took shape and more information was available to a wider range of people with a few strokes on a keyboard, the system’s benefits became obvious. “Slowly, it changed. People are saying ‘Oh my God, it’s easier now,’” Thapa said.

The result, after 18 months, is a catalogue of nearly 3,000 documents available in both English and Nepali.  The digital library makes it much easier to present and share information throughout the ministry, even in district offices, and to use it for research, Thapa said. In addition, it allows officials to review existing policies and use them as the basis for updated versions. Development partners now have access to papers that let them determine what services already are being provided and where the gaps are. The digital library also provides continuity of institutional knowledge, enabling the Ministry to depend less on individuals’ memory for past policy decisions.

To ensure the system’s long-term continuation, MLI entered into a three-year agreement with HealthNet Nepal (HNN) to train ministry staff to run and update the digital library site.  MLI also worked to ensure that the program and its funding will be included in the Ministry’s future plans. Health officials are now committed to the digital library and enthusiastically offer new documents to be included, marking a radical turnaround in information sharing at the Ministry. “This is a big achievement for us,” Thapa said.