Bangladesh ranked 111th among 193 countries in this year’s UN e-Government Development Index, according to UN e-Government Survey 2022 by United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) that assessed the development over last two years.
Bangladesh has moved up eight notches in the ranking while it has climbed 20 steps on the e-Participation Index.
Despite the global crises over the past two years caused by the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic, Bangladesh has made a significant improvement in e-participation globally.
The survey results of the 12th edition of EGDI, titled E-Government Survey 2022 (The Future of Digital Government), were announced on Wednesday at the United Nations HQ in New York.
Bangladesh secured 111th place among 193 countries, scoring 0.5630, and 75th place in E-Participation or EPI with a score of 0.5227.
The survey assesses online service delivery, legal and policy framework, status of e-participation as well as telecommunication infrastructure and human capital.
It is composed of analytical chapters and data on e-government development contained in the annexes of the publication, providing a snapshot of the relative measurement of e-government development of all Member States.
The UN report said that Bangladesh secured the highest EGDI value in the top Least Developed Countries (LDCs) and Bangladesh remains in the high EGDI group in two consecutive surveys.
The report said, Bangladesh has shown tremendous growth in terms of digital financial account access through the proliferation of branchless banking, which has taken full-service retail banking to the doorsteps of rural citizens across the country, and soaring mobile financial services (MFS), which have reached a client base of over 100 million.
Combining these channels, and in collaboration with the Ministries of Social Welfare, Finance, and Bangladesh Bank, the a2i Programme of the Government of Bangladesh, with support from UNDP, the Gates Foundation and the Consultative Group to assist the poor, developed the ‘Citizen’s Choice Architecture’ for digital payments of social safety net programs-such as elderly allowance, allowance for widowed, deserted and destitute women, allowance for financially-insolvent disabled people.
The UN has been conducting the survey every two years since 2001 to expand digital governance throughout the world and to achieve sustainable development goals by 2030.
Source: United News of Bangladesh