G M Saiful Islam: Bangladesh has made remarkable progress in expanding digital public services over the past decade. From land records and health platforms to identity services and police systems, technology has become deeply embedded in how citizens interact with the state. Yet, for many people, the experience of using these services remains frustrating, confusing, or exclusionary. This gap between digital availability and real-world usability raises a fundamental question: are we introducing digital public services too fast, without first ensuring that they are feasible, inclusive, and trusted?
Digital reform in the public sector is frequently reduced to a checklist of technical outputs, while deeper service realities remain unexamined. Public services are not experienced as software systems; they are encountered through daily interactions, expectations, and frustrations of real people. A digital service that works flawlessly on paper but fails in practice is not a success; it is a missed opportunity. This is where feasibility studies must move from being optional to essential.
Before introducing any digital public service, policymakers must ask whether the service is feasible in the context where it will operate. Feasibility extends far beyond budgets and software architecture. It is about infrastructure reliability, data readiness, institutional capacity, and, most importantly, human behavior. If internet connectivity is unstable, if legacy records are incomplete, or if frontline officials are untrained, digital systems will falter. Citizens will be forced into repeated visits, informal intermediaries will re-emerge, and trust will erode.
Readiness on both sides of the service counter is equally important. Service providers are often expected to adopt new digital platforms without sufficient training, authority, or technical support. When systems fail, local officials are left to manage citizen dissatisfaction without the power to fix underlying issues. Over time, this creates a culture of risk aversion, where digital tools are used defensively rather than creatively. Readiness, therefore, means investing in skills, clarifying roles, and empowering frontline officials to respond, not merely comply.
On the other side are service recipients, the citizens. Digital services assume a level of literacy, access, and affordability that many people do not have. The digital divide is not a theoretical concept; it materializes in everyday barriers that prevent people from completing even simple digital tasks. It appears when a rural farmer cannot upload documents due to weak connectivity, when an elderly citizen fears making a mistake online, or when a person with a disability cannot navigate an interface designed without accessibility in mind. If citizens are not ready, digitalization becomes exclusion by design.
This is why feasibility and readiness cannot be one-time assessments. They must be revisited regularly through systematic learning, and this is where periodic perception studies become critical. Digital performance is still predominantly assessed through administrative outputs rather than user experience, i.e., the number of services launched, applications processed, or portals created. Such indicators describe system activity, yet remain silent on whether the service is intuitive, dignified, or worth using from the citizen’s perspective.
Perception studies, by contrast, reveal whether services are understandable, accessible, trustworthy, and worth using. They capture the lived experience of citizens and frontline staff, the very people digital services are meant to serve.
A well-designed perception study asks simple but powerful questions: Did the service save time? Was the process clear? Were you treated fairly? Would you use it again?
Such questions cut through technical complexity and expose friction points that administrative data often hides. They also allow governments to detect early warning signs, declining trust, rising dependency on intermediaries, or growing dissatisfaction—before these issues harden into systemic failures.
Periodic perception studies matter because public services are not static. Systems evolve, staff change, user expectations shift, and new barriers emerge. What worked last year may not work today. Without regular feedback loops, digital services risk becoming rigid, disconnected from reality, and increasingly difficult to reform. Perception studies introduce humility into governance, the acknowledgement that learning must continue even after a service is launched.
Importantly, perception studies should not be treated as public relations exercises. Their purpose is not to validate success, but to reveal discomfort. Honest feedback, especially on areas for improvement, is the most valuable input for improving services. Visible responsiveness to citizen feedback is one of the few mechanisms through which institutional trust can be rebuilt. When feedback disappears into silence, cynicism takes root.
Digital public services succeed not when they exist, but when people choose to use them. Choice is shaped by trust, convenience, and dignity. Citizens will avoid a digital service, even if it is mandatory, if it feels unreliable, confusing, or unfair. They will turn to intermediaries, informal payments, or manual workarounds, undoing the very efficiencies digitalization promised.
A citizen-centric digital future therefore requires a shift in mindset. Feasibility studies must precede design. Readiness must guide rollout. Perception must inform reform. Digital systems must be designed around human capability and behavior, rather than expecting citizens to adapt themselves to rigid technological designs.
Bangladesh’s digital ambitions are justified and necessary. But ambition without reflection risks widening gaps rather than closing them. If we want digital public services that truly work, we must slow down just enough to ask the right questions, and listen carefully to the answers.

About the Author

G M Saiful Islam is a development professional specializing in governance, digital transformation, and results measurement.
Cell: 01722752217, Email: saiful.learner@gmail.com, LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/saiful-islam-64274933/