The issues of governance are too big an issue for any single individual or organization to solve. It requires a concerted effort from a number of different actors - one of these actors capable of making an impact is today's youth. These youth shape, and are shaped by, their region's quality of governance.

So, a platform that creates an opportunity to learn from the experts, collaborate with like-minded youth, and expand their networks is quite helpful especially at this stage, where their access to such resources are limited.

With the Techcamp on Good Governance, we aimed to improve regional integration and enable good governance in the South Asia region by instilling values of regional cooperation, collaboration and dialogue among its youth actors.

Hence, there exists a natural space for an intervention to: first identify, gather and organize active youth actors working in the region; then upgrade their cross-cutting skill sets that will help them to pursue their good governance goals; and create and sustain a regional network of youth actors, mentors, experts working on good governance. This program achieved all of three of these.

In the duration of Techcamp, we managed to engage 1100+ South Asian youth from 5 nations (Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal) through 8 virtual bootcamps on technology, youth and governance. A selective fellowship of 50 proactive participants also went through 6 ideation camps (skill-development virtual events) aiding them to develop and execute projects impacting good governance in their respective regions.

Simultaneously, it was also clear that local governments, who have increased power and responsibility to choose and act on their own agenda in the federal system, require advanced data handling capability to adequately measure their progress. This allows them to improve decision-making and planning, driven by data.

Although the responsibilities of local governments have increased, their capability needs to increase too. OpenStreetMap, the world’s largest geospatial information database, a tool that can be used for today’s local governments to connect geospatial dimensions proved to be a viable alternative to better local-level governance and planning.

KLL recruited local students in three municipalities to collect data on assets such as hotels, hospitals, schools, fuel stations, water networks, etc. in the field to create the most comprehensive geospatial database of the metropolitan city yet. The data then became freely and openly available after being mapped in OSM and stored in Geonode, an open repository to store geospatial information. The resulting data thus created could be used by municipalities, local institutions, and tourists to understand the location-based distribution of the city’s critical assets and infrastructure. These use cases help in urban planning, adding value to the economy and disseminating visual information publicly.

To further aid the success and long term sustainability of the initiative, we trained the local population (through students) and IT Officers in various municipal and ward level offices in Mithila Bihari, Namo Buddha and Rupa Rural Municipality.

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