KATHMANDU, June 17: Minister for Communications and Information Technology Rekha Sharma directed the subordinate bodies to prepare plans in the ways of making the information technology decade a success.

It may be noted that the government recently announced to mark the upcoming decade as the IT decade from the new fiscal year 2024/25.

In a meeting with the chiefs of the subordinate bodies at her office on Sunday, Minister Sharma said that the government had taken forward the proposal of IT decade as one of the transformative areas in the newly launched budget and thus directed the concerned authorities to devise programmes for its success.

"The ministry will make a master plan to make the IT decade a success," Sharma said, calling for sectoral plans from every agency for the same.

Although the Department of Information Technology, Nepal Telecommunications Authority, and Nepal Telecommunications would be playing a leading role to make the IT decade successful, the Minister viewed the media should also mull for its effective publicity.

Similarly, the ministry has instructed to prepare and submit sector-specific answers to the questions raised on the ministry related issues in the Appropriation Bill. "It is the responsibility of the government to address every query raised in the parliament," she argued, stating that every governmental agency should be responsible towards the queries raised by people's representatives in the parliament. 

She said that the practice of preparing progress reports has started in the subordinate bodies ensuring that the ownership of every agency under the ministry was established. 

According to her, the queries were being raised regarding the commitment towards implementation of the IT decade. Hence, she insisted on full commitment of governmental agencies to this end. 

Similarly, Ram Krishna Subedi, Secretary at the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, asserted that each subordinate body should be able to present the details about their performance factually.  

The meeting was facilitated by Joint-Secretary Baburam Bhandari.