Reimagining bureaucracy for a developed Bangladesh

Regarding Bangladesh’s path to becoming a developed nation, much of the focus has rightly been on infrastructure, digitalization, and economic resilience. 

But there is one institution that sits quietly at the heart of every development story -- often overlooked, frequently criticized, and rarely reformed and that is the bureaucracy. 

The bureaucracy is the unseen hand that shapes daily life for over 170 million citizens. It is time, perhaps long overdue, that we shift the lens from critiquing bureaucrats to rethinking the very architecture of public administration. The call is not just for reform, but for transformation toward a “people’s bureaucracy.”

Overview

Bangladesh’s bureaucratic system, a legacy of colonial and post-colonial administrations, was originally designed to extract compliance, not deliver public service. 

As a result, today’s bureaucracy, despite its pockets of excellence, remains overly procedural, risk-averse, and centralized. 

There are few powerful dynamics that make this moment ripe for reimagining public service in Bangladesh. One of the significant dynamics is demographic and aspirational shifts.

Nearly 60% of Bangladesh’s population is under 30. They are digitally connected and expect more than just minimal state services. They are used to instant apps and seamless digital transactions. 

When the state fails to match that efficiency in processing basic services such as birth certificates, land records, or healthcare entitlements, frustration grows, and trust erodes. The bureaucracy must adapt to serve a generation that knows how things should work. 

The complexity of modern governance is gradually increasing. Bangladesh’s development story is no longer about building roads and electrifying villages, now it is about ensuring quality education in every district, managing urban congestion, regulating climate risks, and safeguarding food security. These challenges are multi-sectoral and demand collaborative, data-informed, and cross-sectoral responses, along with innovation, and agility. 

Global competitiveness has become a crucial factor as Bangladesh aims to be an upper-middle-income country. It requires not just infrastructure and exports, but efficient institutions that support investment, enforce contracts, and deliver equitable public services.

The problem

The situation analysis indicates that the Bangladeshi bureaucracy suffers from several chronic issues. One of the key factors is excessive politicization which hampers impartial, all-inclusive service delivery by imposing political power. 

Bangladesh’s bureaucracy also remains heavily hierarchical and centralized. Field officers and local administrators often have limited discretion or resources to address the needs of their communities, as decisions are tightly controlled from Dhaka. This structure is poorly suited for addressing complex, interconnected problems. 

Bureaucrats often focus on compliance rather than results, incentivized to “follow the book” rather than solve problems. Despite a few initiatives, insulation is still a critical issue. Insulation is the lack of effective feedback loops. Citizens rarely have meaningful channels to rate or review the services they receive. Complaints, when made, often go unanswered. This creates a culture of impunity and detachment. 

All of this leads to low public trust in the bureaucratic system. Multiple surveys and anecdotal evidence indicate public frustration with bureaucratic inefficiency, perceived corruption, and lack of empathy. Citizens often see bureaucracy not as a facilitator, but as an obstacle.

Lessons from other nations

It is always better to consult the global best practices before devising strategies. Many countries have reimagined their bureaucracies to become more citizen-centric by adopting several strategies. 

For example, Estonia's public services are almost entirely online. From birth registration to taxes, citizens rarely need to visit an office. The system is transparent, integrated, and accessible. Estonia's lesson indicates that it is more important to invest in interoperability, than to just introduce apps. 

In Rwanda, civil servants, including ministers, sign annual performance contracts that are tracked and audited. Delivery on these targets directly affects their evaluations and tenure. Performance-based accountability has made the system responsive and goal-oriented. Although Bangladesh has introduced an Annual Performance Agreement system at the organizational level, it needs to be linked to the individual performance evaluation. 

Singapore's civil service recruits from the top academic talent pool, offers competitive salaries, and expects high performance. Promotions are fast for the capable, and corruption is dealt with swiftly. Bangladesh may think of this model. 

What would a people’s bureaucracy look like? 

A people-centric bureaucracy does not mean populism or pandering. It means systemically reorienting institutions to serve the public interest, not just preserve administrative order. 

The actions should start from the recruitment and selection process. We need a recruitment and selection process that values empathy and innovation.
Today’s BCS exams filter for academic prowess, often favouring rote memorization. But governance in the 21st century needs civil servants who can listen, negotiate, innovate, and lead. 

Countries like Singapore and the UK include case studies, situational judgment tests, and behavioural interviews in their recruitment processes. It is crucial to shift from knowledge-heavy testing to include situational judgment, ethical reasoning, and communication skills. Including structured interviews and group tasks that measure leadership potential and emotional intelligence can be instrumental.

The bureaucrats must be given legal protection against any kind of over politicization. The sections of the Government Employee Act, which make the bureaucrats susceptible to illegal political pressure, needs to be amended and replaced by sections that can provide legal protection for politically neutral and efficient bureaucrats. 

Every government office should be bound by a Citizen’s Charter that clearly states what services are available, what documents are required, how long it will take, and how to complain if things go wrong. Currently, these charters exist in theory, but few citizens know about them, and fewer believe they will be followed. Enforcing these guarantees would be a major leap toward a people’s bureaucracy. Bangladesh can think of a legal framework by enacting a law like the Services Guarantee Act of India. 

Additionally, Bangladesh can introduce citizen feedback as a performance metric. In this regard, we can establish an independent public service feedback platform, accessible by mobile and online to rate service quality in real time. And it is also important to integrate citizen satisfaction into officer performance reviews. Besides, the government should publish annual public service scorecards for key agencies.

There is no alternative to shifting focus from process to outcomes. Although Bangladesh has introduced an Annual Performance Agreement System, the system requires it to be more objective and linked to individual performance evaluation by developing KPIs (key performance indicators) at all levels. 

There is no way but to embrace digitization and automation in all parts of public service delivery. Bangladesh should build integrated databases with strong data protection laws so that citizens need not to submit the same document multiple times to different departments. 

The government should also automate status tracking for applications (eg, land mutation, licenses) with SMS/email alerts. To optimize the full potential of digitization, the government must integrate data literacy, cybersecurity, and AI ethics into training modules for civil servants. And we need to introduce real-time dashboards for monitoring public service delivery across districts.

Effective decentralization through appropriate fiscal and decision-making authorities need to be in place. But decentralization without accountability is dangerous. Hence, we need to develop robust performance audits and citizen scorecards to maintain accountability. We can also think of introducing performance-linked grants for local innovation (eg, smart irrigation, light engineering).

Drawing inspiration from South Korea’s Government Innovation Strategy Council, Bangladesh may think of creating a civil service modernization commission. This entity should be a non-partisan, expert-led body to design and guide long-term administrative reforms. This commission needs to consist of representatives from the public, academia, civil society, and the private sector.

Being hopeful

Critics often ask whether a meaningful reform is possible? The cynics will say that entrenched systems do not change, that the bureaucracy is too powerful, too politicized, too slow to evolve. But they ignore the pockets of success that already exist. 

We’ve seen dynamic deputy commissioners (DCs) who’ve used Facebook Live to engage with citizens. We have seen land offices in various places embrace digital systems with measurable results. The task now is to institutionalize these sparks into a new administrative model. 

Bangladesh stands at a crossroads. Bangladesh cannot enter its next phase of development with a bureaucracy rooted in the past. A forward-looking bureaucracy must be adaptive, open, data-literate, citizen-centred, and ethically grounded. 

This requires more than cosmetic change, it demands a reimagination of bureaucracy’s purpose and architecture. The question is not whether Bangladesh can afford to reform its bureaucracy. The question is whether it can afford not to.

Dr Mohammad Kamrul Hasan is a Public Administration and Public Policy Analyst.