Questions/Answers

People have to go to the Union Land Office with great difficulty to pay land tax. It costs them money and wastes their time. Also in most cases their tax is not taken on various pretexts, rather they are often harassed. Due to these reasons, many people do not show interest in paying land tax on time. As a result, government's revenue is not being earned as desired. After all, it is often said that the general public bear a negative impression about land tax and land office as well. As part of digital land management, the Ministry of Land has taken steps to digitally pay land tax to alleviate the suffering and harassment of the people and to radically change their attitude towards land tax payment. Landowners from anywhere in the world are able to pay tax online by using their national identity card. The land tax collected through mobile financial services is being instantly deposited in the government treasury through automated challan (invoice) system. The objectives of the initiative include: • To save citizen’s travel, time & cost and reduce harassments; • To facilitate citizens to pay land tax digitally from anywhere in the world without coming to the land office; • To provide land owners the opportunity to access to land tax related information from any place at any time through mobile message / e-mail; • To make it easy for the land owner to realize the total demand of the current year and to know the information of arrears easily from automatic generation of different types of ledgers; • To multiply the revenue collection of the government; • To preserve all mouza (sub-zone)-based information through union / municipal land office; and • To create the mentality of providing better services to citizens digitally among the land officials.

Digital land tax system is aligned with category 2: Enhancing the effectiveness of public institutions to reach the SDGs. Digital land tax system has brought all land officials under accountability in terms of collection of tax and updating corresponding records and registers. Landowners are able to pay land development tax from anywhere in the world without going to land office. Previously most of the land owners were compelled to pay extra money to pay their land tax. After all, people's attitudes towards government institutions are changing and trust is being created. These realities depict effective, transparent and accountable public institutions.

Digital land tax initiative supports 2030 agenda for sustainable development targets and indicators under SDG 16: Peace, Justice and strong institutions. This initiative mitigates corruption and bribery by eliminating physical interactions between citizens and land officials and thus ensures transparency which meets SDGs target 16.5. This digital initiative has also created a citizen-friendly environment. For example, corrupt land officials have become vulnerable to punishment. Several types of watchdogs including media are also active to monitor citizen’s grievances. Furthermore, land officials have been brought under performance-based evaluation - their annual confidential reports include their digital performance in land tax collection and updating back-end registers for perfectly calculating tax. Previously, land officials applied their discretion for determining taxes. Now land taxes are automatically determined by the system. Landowners also have the option to place objection to the amount of tax claimed. Thus, discretionary powers of land officials are reduced and land offices are becoming effective, accountable and transparent institutions (target 16.6). Digital land tax initiative also matches with target 16.10 through ensuring public access to information. Landowners can access to land tax related information from any place at any time through mobile message / e-mail / portal and mobile app.

Digital land tax initiative is socially and economically sustainable and viable because it does not require any external financial, technical and manpower support since its inception. Since citizens are able to save their resources, i.e. time, costs and visits to land offices, this initiative has become more popularized and further accepted for its easy use. Mobile-based internet system is quite enough to run the system. Most importantly, the users of digital land tax system are already well-trained and are motivated to further train new incumbents. This initiative is also environmentally friendly as it has ensured paperless office.

Digital land tax has addressed a significant shortfall in governance in the context of Bangladesh through introduction of harassment-free, time-cost-visit-saving public service delivery mechanism. From the time immemorial, landowners have been used to pay land tax by being physically present at the land offices. It costs them additional time and expenditure for journey. Furthermore, most of the land officials collect undue money from them or harass them by applying their discretionary powers. Additionally, service-seeks return back home without paying tax, if the land officials are unavailable in the office. Such officials often misappropriate collected land tax or make abnormal delays in depositing money to government exchequer. These are all common practices in land offices. Thus digital land tax has opened another window of partnership with other public sector organizations. This initiative is thus serving underserved people consisting of socially and economically disadvantaged, women and elderly, persons with disabilities etc. Till now almost 35 million beneficiaries are being served by digital land tax service with no additional costs. The hotline service ‘16122’ for land-related issues has been introduced to address citizen’s grievances. Over 10,000 land officials have been trained on citizen charter and digital land tax

Digital land tax initiative addresses gender inequality in Bangladesh. Before this initiative women were hardly seen to pay land tax because it was time-consuming to visit land offices for this purpose. Furthermore, the mediator/broker-led system kept women away from visiting land offices. Now the system is free from gender-bias because of anytime, anyplace approach. While staying home, women can pay land tax. Furthermore, disabled people who are almost 5% -10% of the total users of digital land tax service, feel comfortable to pay tax digitally. Simultaneously, around 3000 land office female staff is also confident in using the system.

The target groups of the initiative are the underserved population e.g. widow, poor women, especially the people living in root-level areas with low literacy-rate. Actually, Bangladesh is a country where 90 percent population lives the rural areas. Since the initiative require less time, less money, less visit and no harassments while offering better quality services, it improved the outcomes for these target groups. Although previously they had to visit 3-5 times to pay land tax, now after implementation of digital land tax service, they do not need to visit land office. It has facilitated their enhanced invisible benefits, such as income, extra time for family etc. Therefore, people are more interested and accustomed to pay land tax digitally.

Digital land tax was implemented in different stages over time. Firstly, the Ministry of Land conducted a research in July 2017 to understand how the land tax is being paid by citizens, how land officials behave with the landowners, why government exchequer is receiving not sufficient revenues from land tax etc. The focus of the study was to find out the pitfalls of the conventional payment of land tax and the potential of the digital land tax service. After this study, the ministry had undergone a pilot project in January 2018 in two upazilas (sub-districts) and found that the project was running smoothly. Finally, after the successful implementation of the pilot project, it was then scaled up to 11 upazilas. After the second layer of piloting, the Ministry of Land issued an order to introduce digital land tax service across the country from June, 2018. Then it was finally scaled up in 485 sub-districts in 61 districts. In terms of monitoring and evaluation activities, the Ministry set up a monitoring dashboard to facilitate the stakeholders, including the commissioners, deputy commissioners and ministry officials. Different types of reports can be generated through the system. With such a system, even the applicants could trace out the status. The digital land tax system monitoring process was implemented in different layers and administrative levels. For example, Union land offices, Upazila land offices, Ministry of Land and Cabinet Division are working together to make this initiative a success.

Digital land tax service had gone through various obstacles and challenge over the time. The initial challenge the system encountered was the changing mentality of citizens and land staff. Because of the lack of education and trust in the government offices, citizens were reluctant to use the system in the first place. The publicity of the government and the success stories helped citizens to thrust it. Furthermore, the lack of logistic support and internet connectivity were major setback. But the Ministry dealt with it by ensuring at least one PC, flawless internet connection with logistic support in every land office.

The digital land tax initiative was innovative in the context of Bangladesh for several reasons. First, it helps to save time, cost and visits of citizens to pay land tax. Second, it entangled hotline service to get connected with citizens. Citizens can simply call 16122 to register in the system or pay land tax through the help of call center agents. Third, the unique monitoring and evaluation dashboard system allows the concerned authorities easy access to the weekly, monthly or annual reports of each division/district/sub-districts’ land tax information.

Digital land tax initiative drew inspiration from the idea of paying fees through mobile phones. For example, citizens can pay some other fees/service charge digitally. Since the land management system in Bangladesh is quite a complex matter, nobody took the initiative of simplifying the payment process of land tax in order to reduce the harassments of the landowners. Under this backdrop, Ministry of Land was inspired to take this initiative.

Digital land tax initiative utilized emerging technologies, such as the Internet, customized software and mobile phones etc. These information technologies have power to connect and empower citizens, who can communicate messages, make payments or create, capture, store, transfer knowledge which are the main components of digital government. Thus through integrating emerging and frontier technologies, the digital land tax initiative embraced digital government.

This initiative has not yet been transferred or adapted to other contexts, e.g. other cities, countries or regions to our knowledge. One of the reasons is that land management system in other countries or region is quite different from ours. But is it quite possible to replicate this concept in alignment with their local land management.

Digital land tax initiative is a replacement of archaic land management system. It simplified the path of paying land tax to reduce the harassments of landowners. The other countries with similar land context can replicate the concept with customization. Although this initiative has not yet been transferred to other countries or regions, there are some discussions ongoing with several countries for its customized replication. The Southern countries with the same context as Bangladesh might be willing to replicate under the south-south cooperation.

Digital land tax system mobilizes financial, human and technological resources for its implementation in 485 upazilas (sub-districts) of 61 districts. Almost 1500 trainers had participated in the training of trainers and 9745 users participated in user training in all districts. Land services automation project provided near about 80 million US dollars to arrange these training activities. Land Reforms Board (LRB) collaborated with Ministry of Land to conduct training. Devices like desktop, laptops, printers etc were supplied by LRB. The server is managed by Bangladesh Computer Council.

The initiative is sustainable over time in financial and institutional terms because it does not require a big resource as the training modules are now being transferred online. Furthermore, there is no risk of project tenure since the technical support is be continuously provided from a public private partnership agreement, i.e. the system developer will maintain, update and supervise the system permanently. Therefore, it got institutionalized with all potential support.

Yes

The initiative was evaluated by Mohammad Samawat Ullah, Associate Professor, American International University-Bangladesh through both qualitative and quantitative research. The main objective of the study was to evaluate how the implementation of digital land tax has changed citizen’s experience from time-cost-visit (TCV) perspective. The study also highlighted overall experience, level of acceptance and challenges faced by the beneficiaries.

A descriptive survey design was used to conduct the study. To know the opinion, advice, satisfaction, knowledge, behavior of the individual, situation or group study followed qualitative method. The service recipients were surveyed over the phone to collect the necessary information. Stratified random sampling was used in randomly selected 51 Upazilas (sub-districts) from 8 divisions where a total of 189 beneficiaries were selected. The main indicators and tools used for the study is the Time-Cost-Visit (TCV) tool to best represent the both quantitative and qualitative data.

This study has revealed significant changes in time, cost, and number of visits required for digital land tax compared to conventional land tax payment. The changes are not linear. This study also highlights overall experience, level of acceptance and challenges faced by the beneficiaries. Although, a small portion of participants said learning and using digital system is a great deal of challenge, a large portion of the interviewees said the benefit of digital system is vast compared to the harassments they had with tax payment with physical presence. Study also shows that Online land development tax management service has helped the citizens over 94%. When asked how satisfied they’re with getting the service, close to 80% stated that they were satisfied or very satisfied.

Digital land tax system works in integrated manner adjoining different government offices under one umbrella. It works both horizontally and vertically across different levels of government. Ministry of Land is the central authority that coordinates and monitors the divisional land offices. In the second layer, the divisional land offices monitor the district offices while the district offices coordinate the sub-district land offices. At the last stage, the sub-district land offices monitor and support the union land offices. Digital land tax system coordinates all these government offices. The most important feature is that it ensures a transparent service for all citizens irrespective of their class, economic status, and social condition. Horizontally, the system connects all the offices of Union Land Offices across the country. It also integrates different services delivered from land ministry and also from different levels of government. For example, land tax data is derived from e-Mutation system while the information of payment of land tax is automatically stored in the khatian (records of land ownership) system.

In the designing phase, first survey was made with the users of the system in the rural and urban areas. User’s feedback was taken at every stage of the system design. Furthermore, in designing phase, the relevant stakeholders including Cabinet Division, Land Reforms Board worked in collaboration through several workshops, meetings and seminars. Land Reform Board replicated the initiative in 485 sub-districts in 61 districts of Bangladesh, after successful piloting. Digital land tax has revolutionized the conventional practices of land tax. Any person can pay it from anywhere, anytime Online by using their mobile devices. They instantly receive the Challan (receipts), which is auto-generated from the system developed by Finance Division, which Ministry of Land has partnered with. Most interestingly, digital land tax service engages key stakeholders from private companies which are directly associated with other digital innovations. For example, all leading and popular mobile financial services (MFSs) Bkash, Nagad, Rocket and Upay are the partners of the Ministry of Land. Furthermore, a memorandum of understanding is also signed with private banks to settle funds, which sends funds received from MFSs to government exchequer. Thus this service is a good example of collaboration and partnership.

Key learning points of digital land tax initiative include: • A digital payment system can be more transparent than the conventional payment system. To keep up the pace of the 4th Industrial Revolution in this ever-changing world, we need to keep us updated with the digital and emerging technologies. Digital land tax initiative could be the best solution as it involves almost all the households in Bangladesh; • Partnership with other industry experts is crucial. In the case of digital land tax initiative, Ministry of Land made the innovation by breaking the traditional public sector mentality; • Thinking beyond the box helped Ministry of Land to implement digital land tax initiative in a short time. Areas to improve: • Educating citizens through providing them sufficient digital land service literacy in order to prepare them ready for accessing to any land service; • Boosting up all land office staff to configure for best quality land services to citizens; • Engaging other relevant stakeholders as a bridge between citizens and land officials in order to remove the information and communication barriers; • Designing the digital land tax system for instant understanding by any class of citizens in order to spread it to most of the targeted audience.