The e-BPS is a web-based application system which will use a customized software to assess and ensure that building designs are in compliance with the NBC and Municipal BBL, record the blueprints and other related documents in digital form, and store it at Government Integrated Data Centre.
Likewise, the digital system will also include records related to house and land ownership, construction site data, building plan and drawings, design data required for BLB and NBC compliance, Citizenship Certificate of the house owners and Land Ownership Certificate, among others. [break]
From September 1, KMC and LSMC will launch e-BPS at their municipal offices as well as their respective ward offices. For the cause, the KMC and LSMC jointly launched a three-day training program from Sunday for staff members working at its various ward offices on e-BPS.
“We are going to launch the pilot project at seven wards in KMC and five wards in LSMC. During the three-day training, our officials will be trained to use the system and help them become friendly with the technology. It will allow them to manage and process building permits and ensure their compliance within the NBC frame,” said Uttar Regmi, chief of e-BPS project at KMC.
As many as 37 staff members -- 25 staffs of KMC and 12 staffs of LSMC -- are receiving training from experts. The trained staff members will be assigned different responsibilities such as application registration, technical data verification, compliance checking, field verification, certificate printing, handling of legal issues, assessment of disaster vulnerability and building permit data archiving, among others.
The e-BPS system project has been financed by Comprehensive Disaster Risk Management Program (CDRMP) under the United Nation Development Program. Naresh Giri, program officer of CDRMP, said the automation system is being launched to implement the NBC and BBL effectively as the local government authorities had no proper monitoring system.
During the pilot project, which will last for three months, the KMC will digitize maps of as many as 10,000 existing buildings in its seven wards, while the LSMC will record maps of 5,000 buildings in digital form.
Speaking at an introductory session of the training program, Laxam Aryal, chief of the KMC said that the e-BPS system will be instrumental in providing better quality service to the service seekers as they can track their building permit status online by logging in through their respective municipality´s web portal. “As the electronic system is more transparent, it will also help to curb mismanagement and corruption,” he said.
He said the e-BPS system also will help KMC to achieve its plan to embrace paperless E-governance system. “If we preserve them digitally and save them in an internet server, we can retrieve them later,” he said.
Regmi informed that the authorities at KMC and LSMC will submit a report of the pilot project to Ministry of Urban Development for approval to further expand the project. “We have already received a green signal from the ministry for the pilot project. As we submit the report, a review committee formed by the MoUD will examine the report and decide whether to launch e-BPS system in a full-fledged manner,” he added.
Experts state that the e-BPS will be a boon for disaster risk management, climate risk management, community based disaster risk management and emergency preparedness and responses systems.
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