Bhutan has always considered living in harmony with nature and conservation of biodiversity as an integral part of Bhutanese culture and government policy. Since 2003, databases and information on biodiversity have been recognized as important infrastructure supporting effective conservation. Accordingly, in building a good biodiversity information system for our country, we collaborated with the Costa Rica initiative, INBio, to set up an information system for Bhutan.

Species information was digitized and curated from various public sources such as published Flora of Bhutan and the Mammals of Bhutan. The technology platform was developed and maintained by the INBio team. However, there was little local capacity and expertise to manage, maintain, and customize the portal for our needs.

There were two major challenges in building and maintaining a biodiversity information system for Bhutan: (a) species information curated from various public sources and deployed on the portal was often outdated and the current status of species was unavailable; and, (b) capacity to manage, maintain, and customize an informatics platform suitable to local needs was lacking. The biodiversity portal built and deployed with the help of Costa Rica was functional but changes and adaptations were difficult because of local capacity. We also needed an integrated citizen science observation functionality to engage local communities and tourists.

Attempting to overcome these limitations, we engaged the consortium-run India Biodiversity Portal (IBP). We contracted with the technology team of IBP for three components: (a) work with a Bhutan team to customize and migrate the data; (b) help train a technology and curation team to manage the portal; (c) provide technical backstopping to Bhutan Biodiversity Portal (BBP) whenever necessary. The portal was launched on the Bhutan National Day on 17 December 2013. While the BBP is functional and active, we still have problems building competent local capacity, obtaining resources for development of new and additional features, and establishing an active campaign and consortium to take ownership of the portal. There are also challenges in keeping up with the fast rate of technological advancement in biodiversity informatics and in integrating data from various small initiatives within the country into the BBP, which has been recognized by the government as the national portal and clearinghouse for the country's biodiversity information. Experience in building the portal as well as populating it with data and maintaining it will be shared to receive feedback and suggestions to address these issues.