Use of BIPAD portal at local level for decision making

This research paper focuses on the findings of the questionnaire survey conducted at 11 municipalities where the BIPAD portal was localized. With the major objective of establishing the portal at local level to collect, record, update datasets of all disaster risk reduction management (DRRM) aspects, maintain and operate the system, and to be used for data-driven decision making, the localization of the portal is ongoing. The survey was conducted twice in the total time period of seven months i.e., before localization and after localization of BIPAD portal to see the changes occurred after BIPAD Portal localization in the understanding of the DRRM and relevant datasets, changes in the practice of municipalities in data storage, decision-making and attitude of the municipality for decision-making.

It was concluded that the localization of BIPAD portal was impactful but still lacked meeting the expectations of the local levels due to some limitations. Based on the feedback received from the municipal officials and analysis after the questionnaire survey, the following recommendation were made to enhance the effectiveness of localization of BIPAD portal:

• Placing youth at the local level to transfer technical capacity and engage them in the whole process of BIPAD portal localization.
• The knowledge, skills, ideas, and information gained through the fellowship program should be upgraded through formal and informal training by experts.
• For BIPAD portal localization, fellows working with IT officers and DRR focal persons was found to be effective but capacity transfer of using BIPAD portal should not be limited to IT department and IT officials of the municipalities.
• It is recommended for NDRRMA to have a dedicated staff to respond and troubleshoot problems on the use of BIPAD portal at local level and develop plans to take forward the use of BIPAD portal even if the skilled municipal officials are transferred or changed in the municipalities
• The capacity of human resources and availability of enough ICT infrastructures of the municipality also plays an important role in the use of technology-based disaster information management systems like BIPAD portal.l should be assessed and implemented.