I think it took a year after it was announced (4 Mar 2010 as per Google/The Daily Star) that people could make GDs online (A general diary) to announce that this service is being scrapped, for it was not working. This news, however, was within the news of the Police HQ being opened for anyone to make GDs since many reports of lack of cooperation from the police had come up! Instead of curing that ailment, we tried going digital, and we now opened up the HQ for a process that should remain decentralized.
The purpose of any product, including software, is to solve a problem. If you look at the case above, one can easily sense that the problem was not a lack of software. Software developers often see when proposing solutions an inclination to changes in a process that existed in the non-digital way of doing. So, its not to say that software couldn't have solved the problem. As was the hope with the promise of a "Digial Bangladesh", that we'd be able to bypass the corruption and the grim faced people at the government office counters who nonchalantly ignore the people requesting their services.
Dhaka is a prime place for automating services. The greatest benefits would be derived from avoiding long drives from one point of the city to any other point. Even neighboring areas like Banani and Gulshan are far in terms of time if you are going between them by car. Another benefit that citizens would hope for is to avoid the circumstances where they are victim to unlawful payments for services they rightfully deserve. Sometimes they don't want payments, but they also don't want to serve you. From my own experiences and of others, I know sometimes they would just ignore you and carry on a conversation with someone at a nearby desk.
Thus, digitizing the GD process should have involved careful considerations of what was required for it to come of use to the citizens. Issues like authentication and electronic signatures should have been considered and processes redefined and the whole police camp trained to work with it. As far as avoiding traffic goes, digitizing processes in government offices combined with a use of the postal services could simultaneously reduce the amount of people traveling on the roads of Dhaka and also increase the revenues of the postal department. I am suggesting using the postal department in sending final papers, or even something like passports for renewal, etc, back and forth between government offices and the public.
As of now, a lot of the progress so far is having a lot of forms scanned and put up on the respective websites. That is a good start, but one from which we should now evolve to provide further assistance. The government now takes the liberty to sms its citizens about the evils of corruption, but so far not enough was done to root out the go-slow attitude and inefficiencies of the offices where we avail government services. If a service-oriented culture is not harnessed, the computers sent to these offices might never even be turned on.
Also not encouraging is the Digital Bangladesh website itself being so far unavailable for a month.
Related:
Road to Digital Bangldesh
The purpose of any product, including software, is to solve a problem. If you look at the case above, one can easily sense that the problem was not a lack of software. Software developers often see when proposing solutions an inclination to changes in a process that existed in the non-digital way of doing. So, its not to say that software couldn't have solved the problem. As was the hope with the promise of a "Digial Bangladesh", that we'd be able to bypass the corruption and the grim faced people at the government office counters who nonchalantly ignore the people requesting their services.
Dhaka is a prime place for automating services. The greatest benefits would be derived from avoiding long drives from one point of the city to any other point. Even neighboring areas like Banani and Gulshan are far in terms of time if you are going between them by car. Another benefit that citizens would hope for is to avoid the circumstances where they are victim to unlawful payments for services they rightfully deserve. Sometimes they don't want payments, but they also don't want to serve you. From my own experiences and of others, I know sometimes they would just ignore you and carry on a conversation with someone at a nearby desk.
Thus, digitizing the GD process should have involved careful considerations of what was required for it to come of use to the citizens. Issues like authentication and electronic signatures should have been considered and processes redefined and the whole police camp trained to work with it. As far as avoiding traffic goes, digitizing processes in government offices combined with a use of the postal services could simultaneously reduce the amount of people traveling on the roads of Dhaka and also increase the revenues of the postal department. I am suggesting using the postal department in sending final papers, or even something like passports for renewal, etc, back and forth between government offices and the public.
As of now, a lot of the progress so far is having a lot of forms scanned and put up on the respective websites. That is a good start, but one from which we should now evolve to provide further assistance. The government now takes the liberty to sms its citizens about the evils of corruption, but so far not enough was done to root out the go-slow attitude and inefficiencies of the offices where we avail government services. If a service-oriented culture is not harnessed, the computers sent to these offices might never even be turned on.
Also not encouraging is the Digital Bangladesh website itself being so far unavailable for a month.
Related:
Road to Digital Bangldesh
