Questions/Answers

In Bangladesh, Upazila (sub-district) Land Offices are vested with the responsibility to provide most of the land related services. An Assistant Commissioner Land (AC Land) discharges the functions as upazila land officer. Despite government’s recent attempts to ensure good governance in public institutions, the land offices are often said to have suffered from inefficiency, corruption and lack of accountability. So, objectives of our initiative in Upazila Land Office, Paba, Rajshahi included- • To build up a citizen-friendly service delivery system by simplification digitalization of the process and, thus, to provide the best service in the possibly easiest way and to reduce the time, cost and visit of the clients which they used to spend to receive services from land office. • To create a congenial working environment in the land office through improvement of the existing office management and motivation of the staff. • To empower the citizens in regards of their right to service by establishing an effective connection between the service-provider and service-recipient. • To ensure good governance in land office by strengthening the grievance redressal and monitoring system and reducing corruption which, combinedly, would ultimately lead to develop the land office as a transparent and accountable public institution.

Initiatives like improvement of service delivery and record keeping, better office and staff management and proper stakeholder engagement have turned the land office into a transparent and accountable government organization by strengthening the governance system and reducing corruption in it. In the meantime, as a result of massive replication of our initiatives throughout the country, the capacity of the land offices has enhanced to a large extent, and land offices have emerged as a truly service-oriented and citizen-friendly public office. So, the initiative can be reasonably aligned with the category of ‘developing effective and accountable public institutions’.

Our activities have addressed the people’s needs and rights to receive the best service in a hassle-free environment from the land office. Now their time, cost and visit are saved which can be fruitfully utilized in other sectors for more productive activities. Thus land office has developed its capability as a government organization to contribute in the realization of the target of ‘developing effective, accountable and transparent institutions’ as stated in the Sustainable Development Goals. Settlement of land disputes has facilitated our attempts to ensure peace and justice which have been included in the Goal-16 of the 2030 Agenda.

As land is one of the most significant issues in densely populated Bangladesh, almost every citizen is included among the stakeholders of land office. Previously they suffered a lot because of the inconvenient and unfriendly service process and activities of the evil syndicate encircling the office. Our initiative to develop a convenient service delivery process through digitalization, stakeholder engagement, modern record management and an effective grievance redress system and e-service for mutation of land records have created equal opportunities for all the citizens. Our brand service is the ‘Matir Maya’ (Love for Land), a waiting shed at the land office premise for the service-seekers. A daily based open public hearing session named ‘Your AC Land’ is held there in the presence of numbers of common people to provide legal remedy by the land officer to their land-related problems. The service program of Matir Maya is open for all while special priority is given to the women, senior citizens and physically challenged people. As a result of our mechanisms, it has become easier to dispose long-pending litigations; people’s confidence in public offices has been restored; and repairing the tarnishing image of land office has been possible.

We have introduced a number of initiatives some of which are totally new phenomena for a typical land office in Bangladesh. For example, the Matir Maya shed and the open session ‘Your AC Land’ were completely new in regards of the traditional practices of public offices. Some detached initiatives were also taken in some other public offices. But Paba Upazila Land Office was the first to introduce an innovative and inclusive program of land related services. In that sense, our initiatives as a whole are innovative in the context of land offices in Bangladesh.

Most of the components of the ‘Matir Maya’ initiative are completely new and innovative in nature while some are the newer or digitalized version of traditional services. Records management, the waiting shed, open public hearing session, stakeholder engagement and citizens’ awareness program are the products of the innovative ideas in the context of land offices in Bangladesh. However, the digitalized services such as ‘e-mutation’ of land records, apps based services etc were somehow in practice in other public offices in different mode. Thus, the initiative can be taken as an innovative and effective package of both original and adapted services.

The success of Matir Maya in developing a simplified and citizen-friendly service delivery process has drawn the attention of the government and media. The Cabinet Division issued an official instruction to the Deputy Commissioners of all the districts to replicate the initiatives implemented in Paba Upazila Land Office. Since then, restructuring of services in the country’s land offices in accordance with the Matir Maya model are going on. As a result, the initiative has been replicated in other Upazila Land Offices, and standard of service in land offices have improved and accountability and transparency have increased to a remarkable extent.

Both financial and human resources were used to implement the initiative. Local administration from district and divisional level primarily financed our programs. Being impressed by the success of the initiative, the government later made budget allocations for the office. In some cases, generous funding by local elites was also made. The regular staff of the land office have worked to realize the system while people were also outsourced in case of urgency.

The initiative of Paba has been well accepted by all the groups of stakeholders. Most importantly, citizens taking service from the office are now satisfied. As a result of the high rate of case disposal, land litigations are decreasing. Successful running of the system for a long time will mean lower number of land related crimes, and this is important to ensure peace and justice in the society. People’s time, cost and visit to receive land services have been saved, and they can now effectively engage themselves in more productive activities. Corruption and abuse of public money have reduced, and the clients’ confidence in land offices has been established. Fuel consumption decreases as people are now paying less visits to the office. As a result of digitalized services, less paperwork is there, and this will help to develop a paperless land office in the future. Thus, the Matir Maya initiative have already proved to become sustainable in all aspects. Visiting the project, top level senior officers of the government including two consecutive Cabinet Secretaries were highly impressed to see its sustainability. According to a recent newspaper report, the number of such replicating offices has already crossed hundred.

Yes

Access to Information (a2i) program of the ICT Division of Bangladesh government has evaluated the Matir Maya initiative. Their outcome study is both quantitative and qualitative in nature. Phone survey method has been followed to collect primary data using random sampling technique. Eighteen beneficiaries were interviewed from the locality. Primary data has been collected from the service recipients of Paba Upazila Land Office. In terms of collecting secondary data, four Key Informant Interview (KII) have been conducted with the project focal, concerned higher authority, AC Land and media person. After the collection of data, it has been analyzed through SPSS.

Indicators of the study included- 1. percentage of persons benefited 2. percentage of persons who had the chance of meeting the AC land directly 3. Percentage of people facing any sort of challenges/barriers while receiving service 4. percentage of persons having the chance of filing complaint about any problem 5. comparative time, cost, visit (TCV) analysis 6. percentage of people receiving services in stipulated time 7. percentage of people being benefited from simplified version of service 8. level of satisfaction

Outcome of the evaluation shows that 1. reaching the AC Land has become easier for the service-recipients. 2. the procedure of filing a complaint is much easier. 3. 78% time, 85% cost and 75% visits are saved by the respondents after the simplification in land service delivery through “Matir Maya”. Almost all the respondents also received their services timely and did not face any challenges while taking the service. 4. almost all the service-recipients have been benefited by the initiatives. 60% of them are satisfied and 35% are highly satisfied. 5. respondents recommend for more digitalization of the services.

Our success largely owes to the citizens’ collaboration. Stakeholders have been effectively engaged through the following mechanisms. 1. Before launching, every component of the initiative is discussed in workshops and advocacy meetings with different classes of people. 2. The open public hearing session, held both inside and outside the office, has become an effective platform for engaging common people. 3. Awareness programs like Land Services Week/Day/Fair are regularly organized. Complicated procedures of land laws are made easy to remove people’s misconceptions about the land related issues, especially the way how to receive services bypassing middlemen and bribery. 4. Land office also organizes courtyard meetings in remote areas to get the feedback from rural women and vulnerable groups. 5. The facebook page and website of the office are two significant channels of interaction where people indiscriminately can express their opinions and grievances. We have citizens’ feedback register to keep records of the views of service-recipients. After analyzing those opinions, service delivery is redesigned, if necessary. Citizens also cooperate with us by giving information on different issues like land litigation, land grabbing, evil activities of the middlemen, and also on social issues like early marriage, illegal drugs, extremist activities etc.

Most important thing is that we, the public servants, need to change our mindset. If we want to transform the world, first of all we need to change our mindset. If we can positively change and prepare ourselves for giving the best to the people, there are numbers of ways to do that. Since its starting, Matir Maya initiative has been enriched by adding many new and creative components to the service package. In Bangladesh context, for better working of the initiative, digitalization and full automation in land offices should be accelerated.