Digital services need improvement

Jehangir Hussain

Jehangir Hussain

Due to slow speeds of servers and slow internet people are not getting 761 digitalised services offered by the government, says an evaluation by the government.

Many of those services cannot be found following online requests, says the evaluation done by the Central Procurement Technical Unit (CPTU) of about  67 select digital services offered by 26 ministries and divisions.

CPTU collected the information by interviewing  55 service providers at the administrative level and 340 service recipients.

About 90 per cent of the service recipients said the services still exist and 10 per cent said they no longer exist.

Although most of the surveyed people expressed their satisfaction with the services, they are facing problems while requesting e-dockets, land mutation, e-passports, machine-readable passports, loan services, e-trade licences, and health and other services.

The sites through which the services can be requested are not updated regularly.

For example, on June 7, the surveyors could not access SID Meeting Manager, a meeting notification web application of the Statistics and Informatics Division launched in 2018.

The review of data showed many services are no longer available as skilled manpower was not developed before launching the projects.

One such project is the e-Government Project developed by the ICT division and planning division for the digitalisation of the government office activities to ensure accountability and transparency.

The report found the project, implemented from 2016 to 2021, as no more or not sustainable.

The project could not be fully implemented due to a shortage of skilled manpower for running the online platform.

However, the National e-Government Procurement (e-GP) portal owned and operated by the CPTU to facilitate procurement activities of public agencies is proving to be useful for its users.

The portal, which has seen more than 25.6 lakh visitors so far, seemed complicated at first but now feels intuitive, according to the service recipients.

However, in the case of tender submission in the service, the system becomes slow as the design of the service needs to be improved, the user interface needs to be simplified and there is a need for adequate bandwidth.

Though e-passport has brought convenience to many, some are struggling to request one as the servers often remain down or get too slow to provide the service offered.

Despite digitalisation, the passport offices are dogged by corruption and irregularities, complain applicants.

They are also not happy with the online Machine Readable Passport service offered by the Department of Immigration and Passports due to slow delivery and indifference of the staff in providing digital services, the report said.

The users said the server of e-dockets and land mutation website is very slow and, on many occasions, their tax filing shows unpaid even after the payments.

Besides, middlemen in the land offices discourage people from taking online services by providing fake information, the report said.

The portal to request for no-objection certificate for multi-story buildings needs upgrading and correction as people are not getting the service even after duly filling in information.

Those trying to avail the e-trade licence, a digital service of Dhaka South City Corporation (DSCC), often face demands for bribe from the employees, the report said.

If bribes are not paid, the employees refuse to provide the online services sought on this or that pretext.

An almost perennial problem with the server also makes the online service unavailable for two to three days after an application for which service recipients called for improving the service with regular monitoring.

Since 2013, the government has given scholarships and grants to 1,089 individuals or organisations in the ICT sector for innovative/research activities.

But there are no mobile numbers or emails of the grant recipients, the report said.

It is necessary to verify whether all the innovative projects for which the grants were given have actually been completed and whether their objectives have been achieved.

If the projects' objectives are not met, a huge amount of public money might have been wasted, the report said.

It takes a while for Hajj pilgrims to get a no-objection letter and confirmation SMS after filling in details on the website. Many get it at the eleventh hour, according to the study.

With the view to monitoring the prices of essentials, the DSCC asked sellers to hang digital price charts on the board at the entrance of all kitchen markets.

But, sellers complain that they find no board to hang price charts.

As a result, they write down the prices as they wish, the report found.

It's alarming that even after a decade-long drive of the government to put its administrative procedures online, many digital services are still poorly functioning or exist only in name, thanks to slow servers, poor internet speed, as well as disruptive practices inherited from the analog time.

As a result, people are not getting the optimum benefits from 761 digitalised services of the government.

A number of those services can no longer be requested online, shows an official evaluation done on 67 digital services provided by 26 ministries and divisions.

All this only show that the digitalisation programme is still under the influence of the analog work culture plagued with irregularities.

None could say why this work culture is proving so difficult to change at a time when the nation is making great strides.

A recent study by the Implementation Monitoring and Evaluation Division (IMED) shows that digitalisation of 66 percent of the services offered by six ministries/divisions has saved both time and money.

The authorities might set up a  designated digital agency to oversee the needed reforms.

jehangirh01@gmail.com