Digitalising the public sector
Bangladesh, with its emerging technology landscape, is an attractive playground for tech giants looking to invest, shape and benefit from this market. The government, with its Vision 2021 and SMART Bangladesh 2041 strategies, has pushed for a rapid digital transformation especially focusing on the public sector.
Ministries in Bangladesh now have key performance indicators (KPI) to create ICT strategies and preparedness plans for the years ahead. Keeping in mind the fourth industrial revolution and all that it entails, it seems like we are going in the right direction, but can it be a case of diving head first into unknown waters?
Let's think of the recent public sector projects that have received accolades. Barring a few such as the national ID registration and Surokkha vaccination projects during the pandemic, the successes are few and far between. Although there are regular seminars for digitalising public services and regular conversations on how to overcome the digital divide and push Bangladesh towards digitalisation, the dialogue seems to go no further than those who are in the upper echelons.
Not to say that there aren't a few visionaries who have tried to drive technology transformation in their respective sectors, but to no ones' surprise their projects have failed to deliver the desired outcomes. Despite having focused strategies, the government backup and incentives within ministries to shift to digital, we are yet to hear of a government department that has successfully implemented an end-to-end enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution to automate their entire operation.
This begs the question, where are we going wrong and concurrently what can we do right? I guess we falter most not in our ability to design the right project rather in our inability to identify the right need.
When conceptualising a public sector digitalisation project, one must address the needs of the two key actors in the system -- one being the citizens, the ultimate beneficiaries of the services provided, and the other being the service providers themselves. An unaddressed need from a key actor shifts the delicate balance of the transformation journey, creating a domino effect which eventually leads to failed pilots and scrapped initiatives.
Issues in stakeholder management, identification and resistance to change are not new in the field of public transformation but what makes the case for Bangladesh unique is the collective identity crisis of a population that has seen rapid digitalisation with mobile penetration and internet connectivity but are yet to understand the basics of the technology they use, resulting in a very relatable source of resistance to change – "the fear of technology".
The concept holds true for both citizens and end users as both have legitimate concerns over data loss, data security and data governance, serious barriers to any end-to-end transformation that have remained largely unaddressed in the larger technology conversation.
What can be a way forward? A three-pronged approach may be applied when executing a technology project. When conceptualising a technology project, the department could assess if they have the right data to support the need of the project. If the data is available, they could proceed to policies and check if they have the correct ones implemented which correlates or becomes barriers to the available data.
Based on the data and policies, the decision makers should evaluate the preparedness of the end users and the ultimate beneficiaries of the project and eventually work on the final execution. The process, although tedious, will ensure that accountability is equally distributed. Rather the departments concerned will be aware of the need of the project and thus be equally invested in its successful execution.
Digitalising the public sector is an arduous journey. It requires collaboration from stakeholders of all levels to make the execution successful. As unique are countries' geography and cultures, so are their digital journeys, thus to generalise the process is to ensure its failure.
The author is an economic analyst