Over 700 listed digital services lack end-to-end automation; women face severe data privacy risks
CPD Flags Major Gaps in Local E-Governance Services
- None of the 700+ listed government e-services operate on complete end-to-end digital frameworks.
- 61% of female recipients report privacy breaches and unsolicited messages after using digital portals.
- Local government infrastructure preparedness scores a low 24.1 out of 100 amid severe hardware and backup deficits.
Despite government listings exceeding 700 digital public services, not a single offering operates as a fully automated, 100 percent 'end-to-end' online service, according to a national survey conducted by the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD). The empirical findings were unveiled at an advocacy dissemination event titled 'Establishing Effective and Accountable E-Governance' in Dhaka on Monday, 31 August 2026.
The study findings were presented by CPD Executive Director Dr. Nazneen Ahmed, alongside Research Fellow Tamim Ahmed and Research Associate Sabiha Sharmin. Supported by the European Union, Canada, and Switzerland, the research gathered primary data from 2,611 citizens and 297 local government field offices across Bangladesh.
The report identified a wide design-reality divide in digital public delivery, noting that citizens are routinely forced to make in-person office visits to submit physical paperwork, collect stamped documents, pay offline fees, or pursue administrative lobbying. Only 31.9 percent of female respondents and 43.8 percent of young service seekers managed to complete their administrative requirements entirely online. Moreover, 38 percent of women noted that only the intake form was digitized while the remaining lifecycle remained manual, with 6.6 percent still forced to pay bribes to obtain public services.
Critical vulnerabilities in personal data privacy and digital safeguards were highlighted in the findings. Nearly 73.2 percent of female respondents expressed deep apprehension regarding personal data leaks or cyber hacks, and 61 percent experienced direct privacy breaches through unsolicited phone calls and messages following the submission of their personal contact details on digital service forms.
In CPD's 'E-Governance Preparedness Index', local government field entities scored an overall 38.9 out of 100, with institutional physical and network infrastructure scoring an alarming 24.1. The assessment revealed that 44 percent of computers in Union Agriculture Offices are non-functional, 97 percent lack electrical backup systems (generators or IPS), 93 percent have no secondary internet redundancies, and over 90 percent operate without formal cybersecurity Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs).
To overcome these structural bottlenecks, CPD recommended implementing a 'One Digital Member per Household' capacity-building initiative, enforcing complete paperless end-to-end digitization from intake to certificate issuance, deploying data masking and pseudonymized coding for women's sensitive contact records, and executing a unified single-portal 'No Wrong Door' architecture.
//DBTech/SNAP/MIST//
