Why Bangladesh Needs API-Driven Public Services, Not Bloated Projects

Within just eight days of its launch, the crowdsourced anti-corruption platform Ghush.site recorded 8,941 anonymous complaints, detailing alleged bribe demands totaling nearly BDT 298 crore. While the initiators acknowledge that these are unverified and crowdsourced entries, the underlying reality it exposes is indisputable: systemic harassment, pervasive bribery, and endless red tape remain the grim daily realities for citizens navigating public services. This is merely the tip of the iceberg. In a nation of 180 million people, finding an individual who has not suffered bureaucratic extortion—from obtaining a child’s birth registration to securing a death certificate—is virtually impossible.

The paradigm of 'Nagorik Sheba' (Unified Citizen Services) was conceived precisely to dismantle this vicious cycle.

Regrettably, certain quarters have recently raised ill-informed and specious criticisms against this initiative, citing the lack of field-level hardware distribution and dedicated budgetary allocations as reasons for its purported non-sustainability. Constructive critique is always welcome; however, these detractors fundamentally misunderstand modern digital architecture. In our administrative culture, critical technological responsibilities are too often entrusted to politically connected yet technologically inept actors who lack even a foundational grasp of systems engineering.

'Nagorik Sheba' is not a hardware-procurement gimmick; it is an enterprise-grade, code-based national service-sharing and interconnectivity protocol. When citizen service delivery is tied to hardware, procurement corruption thrives. When it is designed as a budget-dependent project, the service collapses the moment project funding expires. In reality, this initiative was structured as an ongoing, institutional routine operation executed by empowering in-house public sector engineers. Should citizen service delivery be halted simply because there is no lavish procurement project, no designated Project Director (PD), and no room for financial dissipation?

Under this model, entrepreneurs are not subsidized with government-funded computers or internet lines (only six model centers were established for architectural demonstration). Instead, they are provided with secure, verified access to an integrated API Hub. Armed with their own commercial equipment, entrepreneurs deliver doorstep services to citizens against regulated, transparent service charges. As more services are onboarded onto the platform, the entrepreneur's viability and revenue naturally grow. The state's sole responsibility is the systematic, phased integration of all digital services across all 57 ministries and divisions onto this single platform—sparing ordinary citizens the exhausting ordeal of hopping between fragmented bureaucratic silos.

The philosophy of 'Nagorik Sheba' is fundamentally distinct from the legacy 'Digital Centers'. Under the legacy framework, entrepreneurs had to navigate hundreds of disparate departmental portals—effectively isolated digital islands. 'Nagorik Sheba' bridges this structural divide by interconnecting the back-end application code of various ministries via robust Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). As a result, all citizen applications originate from a single unified portal. Most critically, citizens, entrepreneurs, and supervising ministries all gain real-time visibility through unified monitoring dashboards—tracking precisely where a file is pending and how long each stage of processing takes.

This radical transparency and traceability is the ultimate antidote to corruption. Opacity breeds middlemen, and administrative delay creates the breeding ground for bribery.

Budget was never the bottleneck. Without initiating mega-projects, floated tenders, or seeking additional state allocations, in-house ministerial developers integrated 41 vital services across 11 ministries via APIs within just 6 to 7 months. An additional 452 application streams were interconnected through the MyGov ecosystem—scaling the platform to 493 unified public services, complete with login credentials and operational training for over 850 frontline service entrepreneurs. Under conventional government procurement models, such an undertaking would have been bloated into multi-million-dollar project expenditure. We bypassed that procurement trap to invest in endogenous institutional capability.

The real resistance stemmed from bureaucratic protectionism—a deep-seated reluctance among ministerial gatekeepers to relinquish absolute monopoly over their service workflows. Line agencies feared that opening API connectivity would erode their traditional discretionary authority. For instance, when API access was requested from the Department of Immigration and Passports, they delivered a partially non-functional physical device instead of digital access. This was not a technological failure, but a deliberate manifestation of institutional vested interest.

Currently, this system integration drive remains stalled. No new APIs are being provisioned, and code access to several previously active public services has been arbitrarily revoked.

My question is not addressed to any political faction, but to the administrative establishment itself: Why was this critical, citizen-centric digital connectivity suspended?

Without allocating a single penny in additional budget, the current administration could have seamlessly integrated over a hundred additional services via APIs. If the nomenclature or branding is contested, by all means, rebrand it. However, the core architectural principle must remain intact: essential citizen services—including driving licenses, passports, and National Identity Cards (NID)—must be decoupled from physical government counters. Corrupt syndicates, predatory brokers, and bribery networks cluster exclusively around physical service desks. Eliminating the counter is the cornerstone of genuine governance reform.

Civil servants should not be engaged in physical crowd management at congested service counters. Their core mandate must be quality assurance, Service Level Agreement (SLA) enforcement, cybersecurity compliance, and real-time oversight via analytical dashboards. Last-mile service delivery should be executed by grassroots entrepreneurs and, ultimately, by digitally empowered citizens and expatriates themselves.

Capitalizing on the foundational infrastructure already built with existing civil service talent is both pragmatic and imperative. This is not about claiming political legacy; it is about safeguarding citizens’ time, hard-earned money, and dignity.

We urge the government: do not derail the momentum of the API-driven National Single Service Platform. Reverting to donor- or budget-heavy development projects will only ensure that the system stagnates the moment external funding dries up. Integrating all citizen services under a single unified digital gateway is no longer an administrative choice—it is a national imperative for delivering transparent, accountable, and corruption-free governance.

Author: Technologist, author, and former Special Assistant to the Chief Adviser of the Interim Government of Bangladesh.

Note: The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect the views of Digital Bangla Media. As a matter of editorial policy, opinion pieces are published without substantive editing to encourage the expression of diverse viewpoints. Any offence or disagreement arising from the content remains entirely the responsibility of the readers concerned.