Nepal’s IT Department Was Abolished in March. It Still Exists.

Published 13 August 2026. We checked the Department of Information Technology’s own website on this date before publishing. Findings below are what it showed.

Nepal’s new government ordered the Department of Information Technology shut down and replaced. That decision was taken at the first cabinet meeting after Prime Minister Balendra Shah took office, and it came with a deadline: three months.

The three months expired in late June. Today is the middle of August.

So we went and looked. The department is still there — still named, still staffed, still issuing notices. But something has changed, and it is not the thing the headlines describe.

What the government actually decided

The decision is point 39 of a 100-point governance reform agenda (शासकीय सुधार कार्यसूची) approved by the first meeting of the cabinet formed under Prime Minister Balendra Shah, who was sworn in on 27 March 2026 following the 5 March general election.

The wording of point 39 commits to two things:

> Establish an Information Technology and Electronic Governance Office (सूचना प्रविधि तथा विद्युतीय शासन कार्यालय) under the Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers — to be completed within three months.

> Abolish the current Department of Information Technology, and bring all public bodies related to information technology under this office.

A companion commitment gives 60 days to draft an IT and Electronic Governance Bill.

This was widely reported at the end of March by Nepali outlets including Ratopati, Bizmandu, Nagarik, Deshsanchar and Prasashan — it is not a single-source claim.

What we found on 13 August 2026

Here is where reporting and reality separate. This is what the Department of Information Technology’s own website showed when we checked it:

Read the middle two rows together, because that is the finding.

The move has happened. The abolition has not.

The department has genuinely been shifted out from under the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology and now presents itself under the Prime Minister’s Office — exactly where point 39 said the new office should sit. But it is still called a department, still led by a Director General, and the name “Information Technology and Electronic Governance Office” appears nowhere on its own website.

In other words, the reporting line changed first and the institution has not caught up. That is a very ordinary way for Nepali administrative reform to proceed, and it is worth stating plainly rather than pretending a new office exists when the old one is still answering the phone.

One claim we are not repeating

Some coverage of this describes the new office as being headed at Secretary (सचिव) level.

We could not source that. Point 39 as published states no rank at all, and we could not find the rank in any of the outlets that carried the decision. Meanwhile the department as it currently stands is headed by a Director General, which in Nepal’s civil service is Joint-Secretary class, not Secretary.

It may well end up being a Secretary-level office. But as of today that is an unsourced detail, and a rank upgrade is not a small matter — it determines the office’s standing against ministries it would have to coordinate with.

Why this matters more than an org chart

It would be easy to file this under bureaucratic reshuffling. It is not, because of one specific function the department performs.

The Department of Information Technology runs Nepal’s data centre and cloud service provider listing. Under the Data Center and Cloud Service (Operation and Management) Directive, 2081, any organisation providing data centre or cloud services must be enlisted with the department, and clients are directed to use only listed providers.

That listing currently carries eight enlisted providers, including Ncell, which was the first company enlisted back in April 2025. And the department was still running enlistment as recently as July 2026 — after the abolition deadline had already passed.

This is not a theoretical registry. Nepal Rastra Bank requires institutions licensed for payment business to keep their data centre only with a DoIT-listed operator. We covered that requirement in detail in our guide to Nepal’s data localisation rules and the NEPALPAY card, and it is the reason a Pokhara software company and a national bank can end up caring about the same government notice.

So if you are a bank, a payment service provider, or a data centre operator, the practical question is not what the office is called. It is who signs your listing next year — and whether a listing issued by a department that has been ordered abolished carries forward unchanged into whatever replaces it.

Nobody has published a transitional arrangement. That is the gap worth watching.

This is the first of the 35 digital promises to move

Regular readers may recognise the source of this decision. We wrote about the government’s 100-day work list when it was published, and picked out the 35 digital commitments buried inside it — everything from citizenship in a day to a single digital identity.

At the time we said plainly that these were announced plans, not completed work. Point 39 is a useful test case for exactly that caution:

• Ordered: end of March 2026
• Deadline set by the government itself: three months, so late June
• Status in mid-August: reporting line moved, institution unchanged, new office not yet in existence

That is neither a scandal nor a success. It is what implementation actually looks like, and it is a reasonable benchmark for judging the other 34 commitments as their deadlines arrive.

The 60-day IT and Electronic Governance Bill from the same agenda is worth tracking on the same basis.

Frequently asked questions

Has Nepal’s Department of Information Technology been abolished?

Not yet. The cabinet ordered it abolished in March 2026 with a three-month deadline, but as of 13 August 2026 the department still operates under its existing name, with a Director General, and is still publishing notices.

What is replacing it?

An Information Technology and Electronic Governance Office (सूचना प्रविधि तथा विद्युतीय शासन कार्यालय), to sit under the Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers. It does not yet appear to exist as a named body.

Who decided this?

The first cabinet meeting of the government led by Prime Minister Balendra Shah, who took office on 27 March 2026, as point 39 of a 100-point governance reform agenda.

Does this affect data centre and cloud providers?

Potentially. The department maintains the official listing of data centre and cloud service providers — currently eight, including Ncell. It was still enlisting providers in July 2026. No transitional arrangement for those listings has been published.

Does it affect banks and payment companies?

Indirectly but genuinely. Nepal Rastra Bank requires payment-licensed institutions to use a data centre listed by this department, so the continuity of that listing regime matters to them.

Will the new office be headed by a Secretary?

Unclear. Some coverage says so, but the published text of point 39 does not state a rank, and the department today is headed by a Director General.

What we are watching

Three things will tell you whether this is moving:

1. A Nepal Gazette notification formally establishing the new office and dissolving the department
2. The department’s own website changing its name — the simplest public signal there is
3. A statement on existing listings — whether data centre and cloud enlistments carry over automatically

We will update this article when any of those happen.

If your business depends on that listing — as a bank, a payment provider, a data centre or a company weighing where to host — and you want help working out what it means for you, WhatsApp us on +977 9766597181.

Related reading: the 35 digital promises in the 100-day plan, what Nepal’s data rules actually require, and Ncell Business Cloudsuite and the Nepal hosting question.

Sources: the 100-point governance reform agenda as published by Nepali media on 28–31 March 2026 (Ratopati, Bizmandu, Nagarik, Deshsanchar, Prasashan); Techpana’s report of 13 August 2026; and the Department of Information Technology’s own website, checked 13 August 2026. The Secretary-level claim could not be sourced to the published agenda and is flagged as unverified above.