EVEN a poor and developing country like Bangladesh can start making good use of the computers to achieve efficiency and transparency in its governmental functions. There are many areas in Bangladesh where the use of the computer can revolutionise the government administration.
How computerisation can speed up administration is evident from only the working of the Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA). Even in the eighties, the BRTA did its work manually. Mountains of paper at each BRTA office was the unchanging scene. This situation understandably bred delays and corruption for such a thing as even the simple act of registration of a car after its purchase.
Things began to change from the early part of the nineties when BRTA offices were fully computerised. Now registration and other documents can be obtained fast within one working day and also hassle free from a BRTA office by those who are familiar with its current system of working and who do not fall prey to touts at these offices. Anyway one looks at it, computerisation marked an advance for the better in BRTA offices.
The same kind of efficiency, speed of working, transparency and reduction of corruption can be achieved by introducing computers in all spheres of the government administration. The customs department is considered as a very corrupt one in Bangladesh. But use of the computer -- which has much reduced the need for human application -- is reportedly already succeeding in bringing corruption down in this key department. With its greater computerisation, perhaps the corruption in this department can be reduced substantially.
The police in Bangladesh presently spend a great deal of their time in writing diaries of cases and investigations by hand. The system has hardly changed since the colonial era. Records of criminals are similarly kept hardly befitting the need for speed when the soaring number of crimes and the voluminous investigation reports dictate much speedier handling. In some police stations of the country, files of years ago even turn unreadable from disuse and the careless or unprotected filing system.
Computers can come to the rescue in such a situation. A single computer in a police station can make redundant thousands of files accumulated over the years and release space at the station and extra time for the policemen for their field work as they would not have to do so much tedious writing work. Furthermore, computerisation can tremendously aid detection of criminals as their pictures can be preserved in computers and the same can be brought to the screen any time through the flick of a mouse.
Thus, it makes very good sense to press ahead with works for bringing more and more areas of the government's activities under computerisation.
Sohail Rahman
Magbazar
Dhaka
Computerisation of administration
FE Team | Published: August 24, 2007 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00
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