A digital system to manage rural development in Timor-Leste

The National Program for Village Development (PNDS) aims to improve socio-economic conditions and local governance for village men and women in Timor Leste through driving impactful community-driven development across the country’s 14 municipalities, made up of 64 administrative posts and 452 sukus (villages).

Catalpa is supporting the PARTISIPA program through the design and build of a powerful information management system to help the Timor-Leste Government to monitor and measure the impact of the PNDS program.

The bespoke management information system (MIS) will assist both PNDS and PARTISIPA to make better, informed decision making and policies at the national and sub-administrative level to support more equitable and effective rural development.

We are working collaboratively with PNDS and Partisipa teams to enable an offline-capable, mobile-first approach for data collection and reporting which will accelerate data collection and verification process at village level as well as making progress information and program results more accessible and visible to the government and partners.

Mobile-first data collection and reporting can be used offline, making it easier, faster, and more reliable for field officers in villages to collect and verify financial, technical, and social data, and in turn ensures the government is able to collect quality data from which to draw insights.

The program also includes data validation, powerful analytics and a beautiful, user-friendly design and experience.

In addition to the centralisation and management of data and insights, the new MIS will enhance transparency and quantitative reporting to stakeholders, including government ministries and Timorese citizens by integrating historical data from all sukus accessible online.

Following the development of a proof of concept (Minimum Viable Product or MVP) in early 2023, we began work to progress to a full redesign of the existing Management Information System (MIS).

The Government of Timor-Leste’s Village Development Program (PNDS) is implemented by the Ministry of State Administration (MAE) and the Ministry of Finance (MoF) with the technical support from the Partisipa program. Partisipa is a DFAT-funded program implemented by DT Global Asia & Pacific.