E-government services : a case study of DC office Laxmipur, Bangladesh

Abstract

Bangladesh has made significant strides forward in the field of e-Government Services in the past decade, starting with somewhat scattered projects on infrastructure development and some applications for automation of internal processes, but gradually moving towards e-services delivery and inter-connected governance. From late 1990s till about 2013, the government undertook a number of e-Government projects, many of which were initiated from the Ministry of Planning. After 2006, a more consolidated approach to e-Government was undertaken with increased emphasis on citizen service delivery and transparency. The Government has introduced e-Service at DC office at district level, Upazila Information Service Centre at Upazila level and Union information service centre at Union level to give e-services to the citizen. However, several major challenges still exist, such as lack of infrastructure, human resources, financial allocation and institutional capacity, Affordable connectivity, Reliable and continuous power, Full-fledged ICT policy. Laxmipur District, one of the 64 district of Bangladesh has achieved satisfactory success in providing e-Service to every level of people in the district but faces some significant barriers to its further enhancement with respect to the government's capacity. While the government's ICT infrastructure has improved notably, they are still limited mostly to offices in urban locations and skill manpower is badly needed. The administrative structure needed for a coordinated approach to e-Government is also non-existent, the requisite policy and legal framework to enable growth of e-Government still has some major gaps, with respect to guidelines for data standardization, shared ICT resources, data security and privacy. This writing contributes exposing various initiatives, challenges, prospects of e- Government and e-Services in our country keeping special focus on Laxmipur District .It is seen that Laxmipur DC Office though new in giving e-Services is doing quite well and is improving day by day .There is no policy barrier at the moment as steps has been taken to solve the existing problems by A2i and Government. In this research I have focused on e-Government, for this I have used survey strategy to find e-Services and relevant expectations from the citizens of Bangladesh. They have suggested 101 different e-Services also identified certain areas for improvement. I mainly emphasized on the required e-Services hence an arranged list of e-Services has been provided separately in the paper.