Although there is a long way to go for the Awami League to achieve its promise of a true “digital Bangladesh,” the government has so far been able to successfully implement the concept of union digital centres – a way for extending e-services to the doorsteps of people in the grassroots level.
Thanks to these centres, people in villages now do not need to travel miles to pay their electricity bills, process land documents or register births. All they need to do is find a nearby union digital centre which will offer them access to a wide array of e-services.
The centres – the brainchild of the Access to Information (a2i) Programme under the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) – have already served people in over 12 crore occasions including the registration of seven crore births, while more than 20 lakh overseas job seekers have also availed services from these centres.
Zunaid Ahmed Palak, state minister for Information Technology Division, told the Dhaka Tribune that the government has already received “global recognition” by bagging two international awards for bringing e-services to people’s doorsteps.
“The vision of a digital Bangladesh has achieved more than half the targeted vision for 2021, and digital centres play a significant role in this regard... there is a chance that the vision could become a reality before the 2021 deadline.
In late 2010, the government introduced 4,501 information centres at each union; these centres are currently called union digital centres. On November 11 that year, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina inaugurated the centres by having a video conference from her office with former New Zealand president Helen Clark who was in Bhola’s Chor Kukri Mukri.
To mark the occasion, the government is organising a conference for digital centre entrepreneurs today at the National Parade Ground, where around 11,000 entrepreneurs are expected to join and listen to a speech by the prime minister.
Currently, the country has 4,547 union digital centres with some 321 city council digital centres and 407 digital centres in different wards at the 11 city corporations. These centres provide around 400 different services including 60 types of government services.
According to the PMO, entrepreneurs at all the digital centres have so far earned around Tk140 crore by providing services to over 12 crore people. Kabir Bin Anwar, director general of the PMO and project director for a2i, claimed that digital centres have already turned into local hubs for information and digital services to the rural people.
In a press conference on Sunday, State Minister Palak said the union digital centres were offering e-commerce, e-education and e-health services, while the government also had plans to establish the centres as business processing centres.
Serving the rural community
Entrepreneurs who ran the union digital centres said electricity bill payment and processing land records were the two most popular services that educed hassles of crores of rural people.
The centres allowed people to receive within three days - “Porcha” or certified extract from the record of rights on a piece of land. So far more than 4.5 lakh Porchas have been processed through these centres, said a2i sources.
“In the days following the centres’ launch, some people criticised it and used the word ‘digital’ as a negative word. But the situation has changed and more than 1,000 people come every day to our centre,” said SM Arifuzzaman Arif, an entrepreneur of Arobpur union in Jessore.
He told the Dhaka Tribune over phone: “Payment of Palli Bidyut bill is the most popular service in my locality as it only takes 15 to 20 seconds through our network, and the service is open 24 hours.”
Arif earns Tk5 every time one of the 6,000 Palli Bidyut subscribers in his area uses his centre to pay their monthly bill. Arif’s wife Rabya Khatun is also a partner of the venture, which allows their family to earn more than Tk120,000 every month.
The digital centres saved time and cost as villagers now did not need to travel to a town to get the work done, Arif said, adding that even many housewives now came to the nearby bazar to pay the bills.
Farzana Boby Nadira, an entrepreneur from Konabaria union digital centre in Jhalokati, said birth registration was their main source of income. So far, digital centres across the country have provided more than seven crore birth certificates.
Life insurance companies have also started offering coverage to rural residents through 2,768 centres.
Negative feedbacks
Despite the many positive aspects to the government initiative, there were however a few negative feedbacks.
Sources said when the a2i launched the digital centres, they had paired up a man and a woman as entrepreneurs for each centre. But over the years, the women entrepreneurs had faced many discriminations with many of them being forced to leave the business.
“From the very beginning we faced lots of problem for not wearing Burka, while local people also sometime teased me. But after getting the service their behaviour also changed,” said Konabaria entrepreneur Nadira.
Many women entrepreneurs could not continue their businesses as they faced opposition from their husband’s family, she said.
At the beginning some union parishad chairmen and local influential people took possession of the government-provided laptops and took those to their homes, Nadira also claimed, but added that the situation has now changed.
There are also allegations that many union parishad chairmen and secretaries were unhappy with the services as it reduced the authority they previously used to hold on these issues.
International awards
The government has won two awards this year for providing efficient digital services to its citizens.
Last June, the a2i programme won the prestigious World Summit on Information Society Award 2014 in “ICT Application: e-Government category.”
Later in October, Bangladesh also won the World Information Technology and Service Alliance (WITSA) award in Mexico for bringing technology to the people’s doorsteps.