HPM Sheikh Hasina proposes to establish "South-South Network of Public Organizations"

"It would also facilitate generating ideas, sharing experiences and learning from each other," she said while delivering her statement at the South-South and Triangular Cooperation in scaling up innovation in public service delivery organised by Bangladesh and UN office for South-South cooperation at the Conference Room of UN Headquarters yesterday.

The premier also urged her friends from the South to positively consider this proposal and friends from the North to support this initiative within the Agenda 2030 framework.

"Attaining an equitable and sustainable development would remain a distant reality, if we fail to ensure governance and encourage innovation," she said.

In this connection, the Premier said Bangladesh has already signed MoUs with the Maldives and Bhutan to collaborate on promoting and scaling up public service innovation.

Sheikh Hasina said that South-South and Triangular Cooperation have demonstrated their effectiveness to inspire international solidarity in achieving the MDGs. "There remains a huge potential of this cooperation in realizing SDGs as well. This, however, calls for sincere commitments, deeper engagements and action-oriented approaches among the parties involved," she added.

The premier said in Bangladesh, her government has brought transformative changes to the government, as it respond to rapidly growing expectations of the country's citizens. "We're committed to developing a citizen-centric and inclusive government. We've adopted a three-pronged approach in this regard," she said.

She said First is to develop the innovation capacity of providers, more importantly government officials. Thousands of officials have undergone 'empathy training' to eliminate age-old complex processes from the system. This has considerably reduced time, cost and frequency of visits - known as TCV - to improve services access by the common people.

Second she said is to extensively utilize ICTs for decentralizing service delivery to elevate Bangladesh to a middle-income country by 2021. "We call this vision as 'Digital Bangladesh'. We've introduced thousands of one-stop service delivery outlets, known as 'Digital Centres' to bring both public and private services to the doorsteps of millions of people. We've created government information portals, virtually uniting 43,000 government offices,"

The prime minister said third is to increasingly taking a whole-of-government approach to address problems, rather than following the traditional silo approach by the ministries and agencies. "The a2i programme at my office is spearheading this initiative. I appreciate the support of UNDP and USAID in this endeavor,"

Sheikh Hasina said this three-pronged approach has led to hundreds of innovations that ensured qualitative changes in sectors like agriculture, health, education and land use. Service Innovation Fund has been launched to encourage innovators to bring creative solutions to development challenges.

The premier noted that social media platforms are being used to redress citizens' grievances in a significant way adding that this has not only made public service delivery efficient and cost-effective but also guaranteed greater transparency, accountability and quality of the service.

"This has also contributed to strengthening of trust and confidence between the government and the citizens," she added.

Earlier, World Bank president Dr Jim Yong Kim called on the Prime Minister at her hotel.