People are not getting the expected benefit from the 761 digitised public services for slow servers and poor internet speed. A number of those services can no longer be requested online. About 91 per cent of the service recipients said the services still exist and the rest said it is no longer running. A government internal probe team itself has revealed this messy condition of the most-lauded ‘Digital Bangladesh’ hype. A huge investment was made for easing the government services, but it is unfortunate that due to negligence, sluggishness and monitoring by the ministry concerned people are not getting the benefits of these services.
Even many such services are no longer operational because skilled manpower was not developed through training before the completion of the projects. One such project is the e-Government Project developed by the ICT division and planning division for the digitalisation of government office activities to ensure accountability and transparency. Though the project implementation period was 2016-21, the project is yet to be fully completed. But the National e-Government Procurement (e-GP) portal owned and operated by the CPTU to facilitate procurement activities by the public agencies is turning out to be beneficial for its targeted users.
The e-passport system has brought convenience to many, still some struggle to request one due to servers often being down and slow progress in the process. The users said they still suffer from corruption and irregularities in the passport offices. People are also not happy with the online MRP service due to slower delivery and ineptness of staff in providing digital services, the government probe team found.
The server of e-dockets and land mutation is also very slow and, on many occasions, their tax filing shows unpaid even after the balance is transferred. Besides, middlemen in the land offices discourage people from taking services online and disseminating false information.
How good starts eventually turn into worst could be understood better by looking into the government digitalisation scheme. Inadequate skill manpower, inappropriate maintenance, and bureaucratic tangle pull back the service easing strive that requires proper monitoring and skilled human resources.
