Questions/Answers

ICT Division introduced a single voice access platform, ‘333’, having all capacity to ensure information, services, grievance redress & consultancy service to every citizen without any hassle that reduces the TCV (Time, Cost & Visit) of citizens. Especially ‘333’ is playing an important role to bring the early marriage rate down in Bangladesh, save minor girls from this social curse and provide them administrative support so that they can continue their education. According to the ‘State of World Population 2019’ report by UNFPA, 59% of all marriages in Bangladesh from 2016-2017 was with an adolescent girl. Though both public and private sectors are trying to keep the child marriage rate lower in Bangladesh, the rate is 59 percent the highest in South Asia and 4th in global rank. Besides, around 65% of rural citizens who are not using/accessing internet don’t have the way to get information on government services, reporting problems and giving feedback on the services they receive. This under-privileged population are the major sufferers of child marriage as they don’t receive the awareness against child marriages promoted through different media and know the way to take the help of government to combat this challenge. After being launched, 333 has been working to combat this social issue by accumulating the necessary steps. This platform aims to- • Reduce child marriage rate, verbal and sexual harassment and violence against women to pave the way for women empowerment. • Provide administrative support to make the parents of adolescent understood the value of continuing education and dangers of getting the teenage girls married at an early age. • Ensure access of vulnerable citizens to government information and emergency contact numbers of government institutions, public representatives and government staffs. • Implement Citizens’ Grievance Redress System to address any complaint/feedback/ suggestions about government services and provide consultancy services.

One of the major roles of 333 is to create awareness against child marriages and let citizens report against this social crime. After receiving call about happening child marriage, the call gets directed to the District Administration and the authority takes prompt action to stop that marriage. Through stopping this crime, 333 is also ensuring access to one of the basic human rights- Education for all of that adolescent. This also eradicates gender inequality and establishes the foundation of empowerment. It has formulated a proper policy and legal framework to ensure complains made through GRS is properly investigated and resolved.

This initiative addresses SDG 5: Gender Equality. In case of targets, this got aligned with target 5.2 (Eliminate all forms of violence against all women and girls in the public and private spheres, including trafficking and sexual and other types of exploitation), 5.3 (Eliminate all harmful practices, such as child, early and forced marriage and female genital mutilation), 5.B (Enhance the use of enabling technology, in particular information and communications technology, to promote the empowerment of women) and 5.C (Adopt and strengthen sound policies and enforceable legislation for the promotion of gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls at all levels). 333 provides inclusive service for all minor girls around the country with legal action to stop their forced marriages, any harassment or violence against them as well as encourages them to continue their education despite social discrimination. 4018 cases out of 4320 complaining call about early marriage and 892 women persecution report got solved by the help of 333 to date. Among that, majority of the girls are continuing their education after successfully convincing their families about the necessity of becoming skilled manpower for the future.

In terms of social sustainability, 333 ensures justice and fairness to a social policy like no minor girl will get married without her consent and she can seek the lawful action if she wants. Basically, it safeguards their continuation of education, upholds the quality of life, provides equal opportunities and promotes community development. As for economic sustainability, 333 reduces the victim’s cost in receiving govt. services and supports long-term growth without negatively impacting the social, environmental, and cultural aspects of the community. 333 is positively correlated with its external and internal environmental aspects.

According to one of the leading English newspapers of Bangladesh, The Daily Star, (https://bit.ly/2XFCknW), around 42 percent of girls who take admission in grade-VI drop out before completing the secondary level. No wonder that the initiative, ‘Marriage’, taken by their family plays a vital role behind this percentage. Due to this the number of the educated female adult is still less than the educated male adult, though the literacy rate of the country is increasing. This early marriages also led to an increase in the maternal mortality rate of Bangladesh. In many cases service seekers couldn’t find the answer of Where/How/When/Requirements to get the service needed due to the absence of such a platform for all government-related information and grievance redress. These problems hinder the overall growth rate. After the introduction of 333, more than 4000 child marriages got stopped and the involved government officials made it sure that all of the girls are continuing their education. With the help of 333 citizens can easily contact with government staffs and find the way of their needed social problem remedy. This initiative is significantly reducing the gap between government officials and the citizens and establishing effective and transparent solutions.

According to the ‘Education Scenario in Bangladesh: Gender Perspective’ report by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, UCEP Bangladesh and Diakonia Bangladesh, girls dropout rate in secondary education level was 45.92% where the boys dropout rate was 33.72%. Early marriage of girls played a key role behind this. 333 addressed this issues so that no longer girls are forced to discontinue their education and lay behind in pursuing their careers. It builds such an ecosystem where the action takes at soonest after the grievance been received. 333 is also promoting social awareness against child marriages and necessity of education for girls.

The target groups of 333 can be divided into two parts- i. Victims of child marriage and harassment ii. People without access to internet service Since the primary objective of 333 is to reduce the child marriage rate and provide them the administrative support so that the victims of child marriage can secure their basic rights, it takes the number of initiatives to reach the target group and improve their lives. So far more than 4000+ child marriages got stopped through 333 and the majority of the girls are now continuing their education. To avoid the social stigma that often a girl has to carry despite being innocent, 333 authority also hides the identity of victim and her family upon request. By resolving the anti-women social crime, 333 is paving the way for women empowerment. People without internet access are getting benefited every day through 333 with getting the detail information of any public service, government institution, government officers and reporting/ giving feedback on the services they received, any fraudulently, injustice or harmful practices happening near to them. That’s how they are becoming empowered with information.

• ICT Division has developed a central Complaint Management System (CMS) as part of the implementation of call center 333. This is a 24/7 service that means a citizen can seek help at any hour of the day. When any citizen call 333 to complain against social problems like a person noticed that child marriage is about to happen and called 333. Call-answering agent registered the call in the log with specific address of District, Upazilla, Union, etc in the CMS. Upon registering the problem, the CMS automatically redirects to relevant areas Deputy Commissioner (DC), Head of District Administration and Upzilla Nirbhai Officer (UNO), Head of Upazila Administration. • The CMS of 333 was integrated with the central Grievance Redress System of Cabinet Division of Bangladesh Government that made the GRS effective and lead to better redressal of social problems and government service delivery. • To enhance the capacity of government officers for redressing grievances through online and voice platforms, a training on grievance redress system was provided to all concern government employees. Besides skill enhancement training was provided to all agents of call center to increase their capabilities and efficiency in call handling about grievance redressal and information delivery. • ICT Division has developed a knowledge portal that includes procedure of getting government services, contact details of government officers, tourist spots, health, agriculture, livestock, fishery, education, and emergency phone numbers, etc. to ensure accessibility, availability of transparent government information in simplifier way for all people of the country. • 333- Platform was integrated with Government Service Gateway as this platform will be used as the service gateway for all government-related services in future. • For successful implementation of this initiative and ensuring quality services for the citizen, the Government teamed up with an experienced private mobile phone operator ‘Robi’ and call center service providers ‘Genex’.

• The call center agents don’t possess any power to resolve the complaints. So to monitor that if the complaints sent to concern authorities are solved quickly or not, proper tracking of grievances and mechanism for escalating to higher authority have been established. • To handle the excessive call traffic in special time of year, 333 hired extra agents and maintain the service. • Technological capacity of the call center has been developed to tackle the highest possible call traffic for all year. • To avoid the nuisance occurred by prank call, 333 has formulated a policy for finding and punishing the prank callers.

The ‘333’ initiative is an attempt to bring a significant change in public service delivery system and to translate the government’s vision of Digital Bangladesh by 2021. It’s all about a single phone that can be made through both mobile and landline. The central system records the phone call and directs that with required authority. For a social issue like child marriage, a citizen can seek help from the legal authority by dialing 333. Their conversation got recorded and further monitored if justice has been given or not. In Bangladesh, there was no platform such 333 has been created before.

Not applicable.

Not yet.

This platform holds the potential to be replicated across the globe. Recently a team from Bangsamoro state of Philippines visited call center 333 and took suggestion how to replicate this in their state. They are planning to replicate it by December 2019. Besides there is an initial talk of replicating this platform in Bhutan. Apart from this, countries like Niger, Chad, Mali, India and Nepal with high percentage of child marriage can make a fruitful impact by establishing similar infrastructure in their own country.

The administrative resources are handled by ICT Division in coordination with Cabinet Division of Bangladesh Government. The Government teamed up with Robi, an experienced private mobile phone operator for the technical support and Genex Infosys Ltd, a leading call center service providers to ensure the accommodation for operation. All the call answering agents recruited by Genex along with the authority from ICT Division are referred to as the human resource of 333. This initiative has set up with government funding and is run by the joint fund of public-private partnership.

With this short span of operation, 333 has become a sustainable initiative. The Public-Private partnership has been established to build the ecosystem of all operational levels. This platform doesn’t need to depend on any other infrastructure to run its system. The integration of central GRS system with 333 made the GRS effective and strong monitoring system by Cabinet Division enables citizens to receive the public services with the minimum TCV. Moreover, this platform doesn’t need to employ any additional resources to forward their operation. The success of 333 is also ensuring the availability of government fund for financial sustainability.

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The evaluation was done by an external research team. The research team was headed by Dr. Saifur Rashid, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh.

The indicators are- 1. Measuring and assessing the impacts of ‘333’ on individuals, groups, communities and the society. 2. Assessment of citizen’s satisfaction and performance of service delivery by ‘333’. The evaluation was based on qualitative and quantitative techniques of data collection methods by using the techniques of unstructured interview, informal discussion, FGD, case study and narrative analysis. Purposive and random sampling techniques were used in this study. 50 service recipients from 11 districts were interviewed and 20 most success stories were narrated to give a sense of the diversity of service recipients and to delineate the level of satisfaction.

333 has a significant success in the area of women and girl child protection. Of which protection from early marriage, eve teasing and sexual harassment are on the top. The study findings reveal that- • In case of early marriage, sexual harassment, women persecution and eve teasing, more than 95% of the complainers mentioned that they got immediate administrative and legal assistance from the local bodies and were successful in protecting women from early marriage, protecting from sexual harassment, controlling eve teasing. • 79% of these service recipients informed that they received the assistance immediately after the call from the local administrations. Many of such victims expressed their satisfaction for being rescued by the administration after the complaints. Some of the local administrations also have become more responsible in resolving the complaints as these are recorded by the system. • A significant percent (67%) of information seekers were happy with the information they received over phone. Only 33% of the information seekers mentioned that they got either insufficient information or were not happy with the answers. Among the complainers, about 86% were highly satisfied as they received the required legal supports within a week and some of them received assistance in a day.

333-platform enables government recording women related social issues, redirecting issues to concern governing bodies for necessary actions, monitor actions taken and lastly provide insights to plan better such that the problems no more exists. Regarding social problems/feedback on govt. service like a person noticed that a child marriage is about to happen and called 333. Call-answering agent registered the call in log with specific address of District, Upazilla, Union etc. Upon registering the problem, it automatically redirects to relevant areas Deputy Commissioner (DC), Head of District Administration and Upzilla Nirbhai Officer (UNO), Head of Upazila Administration who take Police with him and takes necessary action. System keeps tab and log of all issues and keep giving reminder until the issue is resolved. Each designated person has to submit report on his or her actions taken against each issue in the system. 333-platform has a dashboard that continuously monitors the issues remain unsolved which also work as an indicator of working performance of relevant government employees.

333 is a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) initiative. ICT Division has implemented 333 initiative in collaboration and partnership with 03 different stakeholders based on responsibility and mode of work: • Cabinet Division • Robi Axiata Ltd. • Genex Infosys Ltd. The ICT Division focuses on idea generation, Management approval, conducts training, user acceptance test, document review and service integration. ICT Division in coordination with Cabinet Division has implemented this initiative. The Steering Committee of this initiative chaired by the Secretary (Coordination & Reforms) of Cabinet Division functions as the final monitoring authority. There are sub-committees for regular monitoring of progress to achieve tangible results of improving service delivery and grievance redress. Robi, an experienced private mobile phone operator provides the technical support and Genex Infosys Ltd, a leading call center service providers to ensure quality services to the citizen. All the call answering agents are recruited by Genex Infosys ltd. This Team formation is arranged in such a way that all the Call Center Agents, are under direct supervision of Team Leaders. The team leaders work under the Supervisors and the entire team is overlooked and managed by a Process Lead.

Lessons learned: • Necessity of mass promotion of 333 to reach common people and inform them about the impacts of child marriages and benefit of continuing education of every girl • Although child marriage locks the growth door of society but protesting against it is a taboo to the rural part of the country. So we need to make people understood about the importance of reporting against such social calamity. • General education is a must for social progress. So the government along with the private sector should invest more in assuring this for all. • Appropriate telecommunication infrastructure in the rural areas of Bangladesh must be enhanced. • Bangladesh would need to develop legal and regulatory framework to support e-governance initiative Future Scope:  Incorporating all Government Contact Center under 333;  Door to door Service delivery by integrating with Digital Center;  Remote Payment and Home Services of Public and Private facilities;  Central Consultancy for public-private services;  Services through Video Calling, Social Media etc.  Integration with Digital Payment Platforms so that the rural women can contribute in nation’s GDP.