Govt websites to maintain privacy standards as per new directive

KATHMANDU: The Government of Nepal has specified an arrangement for the government websites to maintain privacy standards as per the prevailing law.

In this connection, the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MoCIT) has issued a directive on the development and management of official websites of government offices, 2078 BS to maintain privacy in consistent with the prevailing law.

With this, the website development and management related directive, 2068 BS has been scrapped. The new directive has specified an arrangement to keep the details such as office name, office services, employees’ details, contact number and email, citizen charter and forms in the government websites. All government websites should be constructed being based on a model prepared by the Department of Information Technology for maintaining standards, the directive noted.

“After developing websites, regular security tests have to be undertaken and every year its status has to be examined through the Department of Information Technology; all websites should be made simple, authentic and accessible for all and the content of the websites should be in html, pdf and word formats”, the directive added.

In addition, the directive has made arrangement that the government websites should be hosted in the Government Integrated Data Centre (GIDC) and can also be operated in a low internet bandwidth. The websites should update within 24 hours if the changes are made in office-bearers and location of the office as per the directive.