Governance and Institutions

Research IdeasDhaka

June 16, 2015

Bangladesh PrioritiesWORKING WITH 30-50 economists including Nobel Laureates, 100+ sector experts engaging major development organizations, NGOs, government, businesses, youths, rural and urban Bangladeshis to identify, analyze and prioritize interventions that will deliver greater benefit per taka spent, helping move Bangladesh towards Vision 2021 and a more prosperous long term future.

In cooperation with the Research and Evaluation Division of BRAC,

Copenhagen Consensus Center organized roundtable discussions with

an aim to figure out smarter solutions to the most problematic issues facing

Bangladesh.

These roundtables are one of several sources

for research ideas.

Sourcing ideas and solutions

Smarter solutions for Bangladesh

Complete set of papers on 30-50 solutions

PRIORITIZATION

Government NGOs

Academia Pvt sector

Think tanks Developmentorganizations

Eminent Panel Assessment

Government and donor seminars

Rural polls Newspaper pollsamong readers

Youth forums across the

countryPrivate sector

meetings

Social, economic and environmental benefit-cost

research by top Bangladeshi, and

international economistsExtensive peer review by

sector experts and academics

100+ ideas on policies & investments

2016

2015

Continuous engagement

with the public via electronic,

print and social media

Working with civil society, government and sector

experts

Widely advocating results of

prioritization exercises

OUTREACH

Research Ideas

Governance & Institutions;(1 of 10)

• Protect private ownership. • Strengthen social contracts enforcement.• Increase salary scale of lower and higher court judges to

the South Asian regional average. • Introduce a computerized court case recording and

tracking system, accessible to citizens through websites.• Scaling-up and strengthening of village courts.• Encourage citizens in rural areas to avail NGO-mediated

shalish in order to resolve disputes.• Appointment of 64 District Legal Aid Officers by the

NLASO.

Governance & Institutions;(2 of 10)

• Increasing National Legal Aid Services Organization (NLASO) capacity particularly in supporting the poor and women.

• Create a legal basis for alternative dispute resolution (ADR).• Establish online mechanisms for citizen-to-government

(C2G) connectivity, particularly on front line service providers.

• Increasing the number of parliamentary hearings open to the public, particularly of the Public Accounts committee (PAC).

• Ensure timely responses to recommendations from Public Accounts Committee.

Governance & Institutions; (3 of 10)

• Provide easily accessible progress report from Public Accounts Committee.

• Strengthen project selection mechanism under Annual Development Program (ADP) that allows highest economic returns.

• Limit the number of new projects entering ADP (annual development plan).

• Review of all approved and active projects in the pipeline in cooperation with the line ministries to clean out dormant/irrelevant projects.

• Removal of demarcation between non-development and development budgets.

Governance & Institutions; (4 of 10)

• Publication of a citizens’ budget immediately after the budget speech.

• Greater transparency of public finance data in user-friendly and editable formats, such as through an Open Data Portal.

• Make all recent audit reports public on website. • Scaling up procurement initiatives including e-

Procurement and PROMIS (procurement performance monitoring system).

• Creation of anti-corruption cells in every government department beginning with critical sectors.

Governance & Institutions; (5 of 10)

• Review and strengthen the criteria and process of appointments of Chairmen and members of various constitutional and statutory commissions.

• Reform PPP rules of engagement to introduce dispute resolution mechanism.

• Tying in land ownership with National ID database. • Creation of separate court benches to deal with

different types of cases (e.g. land disputes, customs, port clearance, financial frauds).

• Abolish quotas in the public service recruitment process system [only merit based recruitment].

Governance & Institutions; (6 of 10)

• Conduct local government election without influence of party politics.

• Transparency in political parties’ financial operations through increased accountability to the public [using their own websites].

• Developing a results-based Monitoring & Evaluating strategy to monitor implementation of 7FYP and associated programs.

• Appointment of an Ombudsman with sufficient resources as guaranteed by Article 77 of the Constitution.

• Establish a transparent criteria and process for the recruitment of Supreme Court judges.

Governance & Institutions; (7 of 10)

• Disclosure of assets by judges at the time of entry, during the tenure intermittently and after leaving the office.

• Create a “Case Management & Coordination Committees” for disposal of civil and criminal matters at the district level.

• Offering incentives to undertake special sessions at the lower and higher court [overall case back log should not cross 3.3 million threshold by 2019].

• Invest in one-stop crisis centers for VAW victims at the district and sub-district level.

• Scaling up government performance monitoring system (GPSM) across 40,000 government offices.

Governance & Institutions; (8 of 10)

• Design a Local Government Legal Framework (LGFL) to cover all units and tiers irrespective of urban and rural.

• Broaden the role of oversight institutions.• Promote online participation of citizens in prioritizing,

implementing and monitoring of development programs.• Integrate e-Governance with local government activities. • Implement a comprehensive tax sharing formula

between center and local governments.• Impose a restriction of the number of days a

parliamentarian can remain consecutively absent from parliamentary sessions.

Governance & Institutions; (9 of 10)

• Track data at different levels (national, district & upazila) on RTI applications, responses, appeals and decisions.

• Facilitate RTI awareness raising partnerships among different stakeholders through Cabinet Division’s Coordination and Reform Unit.

• Implement the whistleblowers law.• Support Election Commission (EC) to carry out its

operation.• Scale up and support a2i’s service process simplification

(SPS) works.• Expand the e-Filing system across all government offices.

Governance & Institutions; (10 of 10)

• Allow police to exchange and share information and data in a secured manner.

• Creation of a crime data management system (CDMS) across all district and divisional headquarters.

• Enhance law enforcing agencies capacity in preventing and prosecuting cybercrimes.

• Greater technology transfer through partnerships with NGOs, Multinational Companies, and donors.

• Reduce MPs’ influence on local government authority.

Full List of Attendees and IntervieweesDr. Ashikur Rahman, Senior Economist, PRI.Prof. Abdul Bayes, Director, RED, BRAC.Dr. Mohammad Rafi, Program Head, RED, BRAC. Suhel Ahmed Choudhury, Former Secretary.Abdullah Al Zobair, Lecturer, BIU.Siamul Rabbany, Program Officer, UNDP. Dr. Mahmuda, Program Analyst, UNDP.Akira Munakata, Advisor, JICA.Sarwar Choudhury, BIGD.Nazrul Islam, Cabinet Division, Secretary - Coordination and Reforms.Dr. Abu Shahin M. Ashaduzzaman, Cabinet Division, Deputy Secretary.Devabrata Chakraborty, Director, Governance Innovation Unit (GIU), Prime Minister's Office.

Professor Rounaq Jahan, Distinguished Fellow, Center for Policy Dialogue (CPD).Barrister Manzoor Hasan OBE, South Asian Institute of Advanced Legal and Human Rights Studies (SAILS) Executive Director.Dr. Jonathan Rose, Research Advisor, South Asian Institute of Advanced Legal and Human Rights Studies (SAILS).