Improving Public Administration and Services Delivery through e-Solutions

Closed

The proposed TA aims to improve public administrations and public service deliveries using e-Solutions leading to inclusive development. The outcome of theproposed TA is envisaged the successful introduction of e-Services for selected governments and target districts.The proposed project is consistent with ADB's country partnership strategy. It supports the recommendations in ADB's 2009 country assistance program evaluation for Bangladesh, which found that lack of good governance in many areas is one of the country's binding constraints on growth, and recommended support for further governance reforms. Hence, the ADB's country operations business plan for 20102012 for Bangladesh focuses on providing assistance in this area. Recognizing the need for the application of ICT tools for improved governance, the proposed TA has identified key areas where the application of ICT tools has the potential to enhance efficiency, transparency, and accountability in public service delivery.The proposed project is basically in line with the USD25mil ADB loan project which has begun effective in Oct. 2011 for three years with the aim of improved transparency and accountability in tax and land record administrations at both the central and local levels in Bangladesh. Furthermore, the proposed project has following features: It will look for broader opportunities in government functions that would significantly affect governance reforms in Bangladesh. It will support the Governance Management Project from the e-Governance perspective to maximize investment in ICT in line with the Government's Digital Bangladesh strategy. More specifically, the proposed project will support the Government plan to introduce e-Governance at all executive levels of the Government linking all local government institutions by 2015. The propose project is unique from the traditional ADB projects in that it tries to fill the gap between the Government's new initiative to emphasize ICT for multi-sectors and what ADB used to support under the ADB's public sector management. E-Governance has both features of ICT as well as public sector management. Since ICT applications have lots of common functions that can be applied to any e-Governance project including ICT infrastructure, it would be much more effective and efficient if those common functions are designed, delivered and managed in integrated and consolidated fashion, which is normally not happened in ADB's traditional operation where ICT has not been systematically incorporated to date.