Deliver hundreds of public services to the underserved more easily, cheaply and reliably through grassroots one-stop centres hosted in government organizations but run by private entrepreneurs.

Simplifying the Process of Providing Trade License.

Due to the manual process of granting trade licenses from Pourashova Office, applicants were confronting hassles in receiving the license. They needed to come at…

Decentralizing Public Service Delivery

To eliminate the need for millions of underserved citizens to travel great distances, incur high cost and endure the considerable hassle of accessing government services, a2i in collaboration with the Local Government Division, established 5,000+ one-stop service delivery outlets known as Digital Centres throughout Bangladesh in all:

Union Councils (Union Parishad) – the lowest tier of the Bangladesh government;

Sub-district Councils (Upazila Parishad);

Municipalities (Paurashava); and

City Corporations.

These last-mile access points are about 3 km from the average rural citizen’s home, whereas a government sub-district office is typically 20 km and a district office over 35 km.

A sustainable solution to enhance access for the underserved

Like many developing countries, in Bangladesh, government offices at the district and sub-district levels provide a wide range of public services which are labor-intensive and time-consuming for the service providers and recipients alike. Citizens, a majority of whom reside and work in rural areas, typically have to travel long distances to government offices in urban or semi-urban areas foregoing income and incurring additional costs such as transportation, accommodation and food to access even basic services.

The Digital Centres ensure that the underserved such as rural women, people with disabilities and the elderly – regardless of their literacy and ICT literacy – can access vital information and services.

These one-stop service centers are essentially micro-enterprises run by ‘citizen entrepreneurs’ – 1 male and 1 female in tandem with elected local government representatives.

They leverage modern technology to provide citizens, both free and fee-based access to public services (land records, birth registration, telemedicine, life insurance, passport and overseas job application as well as application to various other government services) and private services (mobile financial services, insurance, various types of computer and vocational training, etc.). Increasingly, the Digital Centres are catalyzing financial inclusion through agent banking and connecting low-income communities to the wider digital economy through Assisted Rural E-Commerce.

Digital Centre Entrepreneurs: an innovative public-private entrepreneurship model

One of the most innovative aspects of the Digital Centres is their public-private entrepreneurship model. It was designed to bring the mandate and the infrastructure of the public sector together with the entrepreneurial zeal and efficiency of the private sector. The Digital Centres are physically hosted in local government offices and 1% of their annual budget is directed towards these enterprises. Meanwhile everyday expenses – like utility charges, internet bills, computer maintenance costs, etc. – are borne by the entrepreneurs who must generate revenues by providing certain public and private services. In practice, this means that if working women and men can only make time after 5, over the weekend, or even on public holidays to come to the centers, the entrepreneurs would still serve them. Given they are not salaried government employees, failing to do so would only harm their business. This has enabled citizens to receive efficient, affordable and reliable access to services at their doorsteps.