Locations
Aspire to Innovate (a2i)
Background
The Aspire to Innovate (a2i) Program was initiated in 2020 to build on the Government of Bangladesh’s efforts to introduce a citizen-centric culture of innovation in civil service to improve public service delivery and make services more comprehensive, inexpensive, reliable, and easier to access. Recently, government efforts have led to significant experimentation and the creation of prototype solutions. This project intends to build on this momentum and provide support to establish institutional mechanisms that incentivize, sustain and scale innovations to attain sustainable impact. Additionally, it intends to involve the private sector in this innovation process to enhance public service delivery. The project plans to bring commensurate innovation in financial services to support public service innovations.
Since the inception of a2i, the socio-economic landscape of Bangladesh has transformed significantly. The Covid-19 pandemic has also changed the priorities of the nation as well as a2i. Bangladesh is set to graduate from an LDC country to a middle-income country by 2026 and a high-income country by 2041. The overall change in the development context ushered by the implementation of ‘Vision 2041’ by the other organs of the government now requires a fundamental rethinking of the project’s scope and strategy. The strategy and scope of the program also need to consider the impacts of the 4th Industrial Revolution on the economy. Hence, this revision proposes a revised set of new priorities as detailed in the component sections to exacerbate the development of Bangladesh.
Area of Work
Institutionalizing Public Service Innovation and Improving Accountability
Catalyzing Digital Financial Services & Fintech Innovations
Incubating Private Sector-enabled Public Service Innovation
Significant Achievements
a2i has ensured significant achievement in transforming governance and public service delivery. a2i Program has facilitated “Time, Cost and Visit (TCV) measurement” which is a unique evaluation tool to assess the service delivery process by measuring impacts from the citizen’s point of view. Furthermore, an integral part of this is the mainstream digitalization in Bangladesh that has led to the digitalization of more than 2,000 public services. a2i introduced eNothi is a digital decision support system which is already in use in nearly 12,000 government offices ensuring faster processing of citizens’ applications for services through the electronic movement of files across different administrative layers. Revolutionizing the traditional filing system, e-Nothi provides a solution to several problems that plagued the previous manual system.
One of the biggest concerns facing Governments around the world is establishing citizen centric public service delivery systems. The introduction of GRS in Bangladesh has introduced a mechanism on the citizen side to register their grievances and track the action of relevant authorities. In order to make this redress system available for last mile citizens, GRS has been integrated with the 333 National Help Line and the national one-stop public service platform, myGov.
This achievement is concerned with digitalizing and bringing simplified and accessible public services to citizens through physical, voice enabled and web-based service access points. a2i has implemented 8,858 Digital Centers through which more than 863 million public services have already been provided. Additionally, National Portal of Bangladesh has connected more than 34 thousand government offices. Moreover, 333 national helpline has also been launched to provide all the information and grievance redress of the government. Till date, more than 98 million calls have been received from 333 national helpline through which more than 39,000 social problems have been resolved.
Objectives
Culture of citizen-centric innovation institutionalized and accountability improved to accelerate SDG achievement in Bangladesh
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