e-Governance Discourse: Reality in Bangladesh
Md. Anwarul Kabir
Published on February 13, 2007
Introduction:
In 1999, during my way back to Bangladesh from the UK , the immigration officer at Heathrow while checking my passport looked at his computer screen and suddenly asked me �Did you lose your passport?... anyway, you got it afterward.� Instantly, I could not remember the event. However, in one or two minutes I could recall that once I put my passport in a bag inside the boot of my uncle�s car and later I forgot to collect it duly. After a few days, when I needed the passport, my memory completely betrayed me to locate the passport. In despair, I phoned the Home Office (immigration department) that I lost my passport. Luckily, within few days, my passport was discovered from the boot while the car was being cleaned. Accordingly, I informed the Home Office immigration department that my passport was found. The very objective of sharing my personal experience is just to shed light on how effective and efficient Information storing and retrieval systems could be implemented and operated by the government organ to deal with its client.
During 1995-96 as I worked as casual interpreter for the British Home Office, I had close contact with some personnel working there who facilitated me to observe the part of their information system closely. Being a software engineer, I was really amazed at the design strategy of their distributed database system. In designing, they could successfully align the system with the mission and vision of the Home Office. Even 10 years back from now, strategically, they emphasized on the concept of e-governance in designing their system. They realized that the implemented systems would not be only for the internal use for the Home Office personnel. They had the vision that eventually their system would be used by many other government organs including concerned citizens of the country. I believe, their system has gained maturity with the support of more efficient cutting edge technologies by this time.
e-Governance Revisit:
With the advent of Internet technology (more technically wide use of TCP/IP protocol) in the early part of the last decade of the last century, the developed countries coined the concept of e-governance. The policy makers of the developed countries envisioned that new developments in ICT and especially the TCP/IP protocol would pay a significant contribution in achieving objectives of good governance. So, the term e-Governance can be defined as efficient and effective use of modern ICT technology with a view to establishing good governance for any country. From the management and technological perceptions, the e-governance can also be defined as Electronic State Management System based on information and communication technologies (ICT), including the Internet technology.
Broadly, the government, citizen and business concerns (which include NGOs, corporate and also different professional bodies) are the three major actors in the e-government as shown in the figure. Depending on their interactions components of e-governance can be featured as follows:
1. G2C (Government to Citizen): deals with interaction between individual citizens with the government. Examples of G2C are payment of utility bills or applying for passports through relevant website of the e-Governance system. Good governance always stresses on participatory and democracy concepts. Citizen should not be isolated from the government. Using appropriate website of the system citizen can also be interactive in different development processes of the government.
2. G2B (Government-to-Business): involves interaction of the business establishments with the government. These business establishments may be corporate, NGOs or other professional bodies. The example of G2B is submission of tax assessment by any business establishment to the department of Taxation of the government through the Internet.
3. G2G (Government-to-Government): involves interaction among government officials, whether within a government office or within different organs of the government. The example pf G2G may be a request of allocation of budget by any department of the government
Ultimate objective of e-Governance is to establish a good governance. The attributes of the good governance can be identified as follows: a. Honesty b. Efficiency and Effectiveness (in terms of time space and money) c. Justice d. Reliability e. Participatory and Democracy f. Accountability g. Accessibility and Transparency h. equity i. visionary in decision making. All of these attributes can be achieved through proper implementation of e-governance using the state of the art technologies.
It has been proved that the corruption levels in the public sector have dramatically fallen in the countries where e-Governance has been initiated. A survey in India has revealed that the states where e-governance has been established even partially, the corruption rate has dramatically reduced. The survey has found that in Kolkata and Mumbai, due to implementation of e-Governance in some public sectors, the corruption rates have declined to 19% and 18% compared to 51% and 38% respectively in 2000. Even in Bangladesh we may observe that due to computerization of Railway Reservation System, the number of black-marketers (middle men who used to involve in illegal ticket selling) has reduced significantly. Elimination of the middle men in citizen-government interaction, in fact, is the major factor that acts in eradicating corruption levels. Again in the government offices, if the people interact with the government organs through web-page then colonial red tapes practices will be totally removed. This in turn will reduce the pervasive bribery practices in government offices.
The computerization of the system speeds up the performance in terms of time, reliability, efficiency and effectiveness. For instance, had a proper e-Governance system implemented then a person would have easily applied for a new passport using his digital signature and citizenship identifier and got the passport ready within 24 hours without paying any urgent/very urgent fee or taking any other hassle. It would be possible if we consider a complete integrated e-Government system. Issuance of a new passport requires many processes (e.g. police verification, validation of Birth certificate). In an e-Governance environment, as all the departments of the government are virtually integrated, when the person applies for a passport through Website of the passport and immigration department, the specific data stated by the applicant will be sent to the relevant departments instantly for cross checking and validation. As for example, for getting police clearance, data provided by the applicant will be cross checked with police department�s data and a report (either positive or negative) will be generated automatically and sent to the server of the Passport and Immigration department office. Subsequently in the server of the Passport and Immigration department receiving the person�s application and report as required from various departments system will decide automatically whether the person is eligible to receive the new passport or not. Even the printing process of the passport can be automated. So, because of the minimum involvement of the middleman in this case, the corruption and hassles in receiving passport will be approximately at zero level compared with the present scenario in Bangladesh.
e-Governance confirms the active participation of the people in the process of establishing democracy norms in the country. Unfortunate incidence that occurred in Phulbari, centering the coal mine contract with the Asia Energy could be avoided if e-Governance environment prevailed here. Prior to contract with Asia Energy, the government could take opinion from the local people through Website on this issue. On the same issue a Website discussion group could have been formed which would make the government transparent in decision making. By the people�s active participation, some pro-people positive decision would come out considering the country�s resource constraints, local environment, and other socio-political issues.
e-Governance leads to e-Democracy too. For instance, in an e-Governance environment, any political party can be able to select the possible candidate for the election democratically if it has its own Website (this is also a component of e-Governance) by seeking opinion through website. This selection will reflect the opinion of the common people and thus will reduce the impact of black money in the selection of the candidature.
Right now we are observing enormous wastage of public money in preparing politically biased error-prone voter list. However, in e-Governance environment, as the citizens� basic record database is one of the vital components, it is easily possible to generate a flawless unbiased voter list with the latest status of the citizen (e.g. age, present address) in any time without spending any additional money.
Accessibility to information for all is the prime concern of the e-governance. The citizen must have access to e-Governance. In reality, availability and non-availability of information creates the digital gap among different segments of the people in a society which is the one of the major causes of non-equity and social injustice. If everybody gets the same extent of accessibility to e-Governance then the class distance among the different groups in the society will be minimized abruptly.
e-Governance reality in Bangladesh: As a nation we are like empty vessel�we talk too much but do little in practice. When the buzz word e-Commerce started to get its popularity, many of our ICT giant paid much attention to it by organizing seminars, workshops etc. Accordingly, they persuaded the policy makers of the government and in 2001 they formed a ICT Task force headed by the incumbent Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia for introducing e-Governance in Bangladesh. Apparently, assessing their propaganda it was assumed that the government would implement e-Governance overnight. However, over the five years, insignificant progress has been marked so far. Other than Planning Commission and ministry of finance, no other ministry could implement any significant software systems even for their internal use. Some ministries (e.g. ministry of Science and Technology) have created some static Websites with a view to disseminating information to public. As this Websites are not interactive, there is no scope for active participation of the concerned people. Moreover, as these Websites have not been updated regularly, they mislead public with backdated information.
In e-Governance environment all governmental organizations should have networked and interconnected. This connectivity facilitates to exchange information among different organs of the government without any manual intervention. Ideally, for this, we need to build up IOS (Inter Organizational Systems) or EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) software. Unfortunately, till to date all software systems that developed in our governments� various organizations are discrete in nature and so they do not support inter-departmental or inter-organizational data sharing technique.
Computerization and e-Governance are not synonymous. In fact, over the five years, computerization processes in some ministries or government sectors have been initiated. But truly speaking it is not e-Governance. We have to go a long way to implement e-Governance in our country.
Road Map to e-Governance: This is true that available resources for e-Governance in Bangladesh are inadequate. The low fixed telephone density is one of the major barriers to digital communications (which paves way to Internet communication). However, rapid growth of mobile telephonic network presumably overcomes this barrier. Besides, we can also use the underused optic fiber network of the railway department for this purpose. For global connectivity for e-Governance, submarine cable connection will play a significant role if we use it appropriately.
For establishing e-Governance in Bangladesh, ICT infrastructure can be built step by step even at village level, if we have a Road Map or master plan for e-Governance using our limited resources.
Decentralization of distributed database is one of the essential features of the e-Governance. Decentralized or localized database ensures autonomy as well as reduces traffic loads in network communication. Keeping this in mind, we need to design e-Governance for Bangladesh. Strategically, we have to prioritize the sectors of the government which is to be addressed first. For any good governance Local government is the vital and crucial and in Bangladesh this is our Upazilla administrative unit. So, e-Governance in Bangladesh should be initiated at Upazilla level first. Perhaps, this bottom up approach (i.e. starting from upazilla) strategy for e-governance is the most appropriate in country like ours, where the majority of the population live in villages under upazilla administrations.
Financial constraints can be viewed as the major problem in this context. But if the government is really sincere enough to use resources in economic way then the funding for e-Governance will not be a big issue. For instance, we can reduce the software procurement cost if we use open source software or free software for developing various modules for e-Governance. Besides, funding can also be possible from World Bank, DFID, EU or other sources for initiating such project. Even the government may approach to Microsoft in this context. It may be noted that Bill Gate has already decided to dedicate his substantial amount of his wealth to philanthropic works. He must be aware that ultimate e-Governance will bring equity, social justice by reducing the digital gap among different segments of the society. If the government can persuade Bill Gate for implementing e-Governance in Bangladesh, presumably he will come forward to assist a technologically backward country like ours.
Finally, it can be stated that we have resources in terms of manpower. Among the new generation, many are getting technologically solvent. We can use them in our e-Governance project. But preconditions for initiating such a huge project, the government needs to be honest, transparent, and stable with a clear vision for future.______
Md. Anwarul Kabir is a Assistant Professor & Research Coordinator of American International University-Bangladesh. He writes from Dhaka.
