The Government of Bangladesh has introduced National e-Service Bus under Bangladesh National Digital Architecture framework to ensure interoperability, availability and reusability of government online services, information and data. Different government organization have already developed software in an isolated way to digitalize their information and data which are not interoperable for use by other organizations causing huge monetary involvement to prepare same information and data. National e-Service bus will remove this duplicity and will provide seamless data flow between organizations. It connects services from different organizations and maintains its life cycle, seamless data exchange in a standard format. When a service is published to this e-Service bus, other organization can readily consume this service in a secure way without any hassle. It can also control data exchange and service life cycle through it’s different quota & throttling polices. It provides logs and audit trails to support both offline analysis and real-time troubleshooting. Both SOAP and RESTful web services can be integrated with e-Service bus. It's running smoothly for the last 6+ years.

Results:
18 organizations and agencies uses National e-Service bus for verification and customer On-boarding. SUROKKHA, covid vaccine management platform, verified 13,00,00,000+ citizens through e-service bus. As of now, 30+ e-services, citizen services and application systems are using it to provide/consume data and information. 4-5 Govt application systems and e-services are in pipeline to connect to e-Service Bus.

Impact:
National e-Service Bus has made authentication & verification easy and hassle-free for Govt and Non-govt organizations. It’s creating stories by enabling organizations to move fast in official activities and service delivery. They are being used from national issue (surokkha platform, PM’s cash incentive programme etc) upto simple verification needs. In this way, it’s contributing great to make life meaningful.

https://bnda.gov.bd/page/service-detail.jsp?name=service-bus

• Bangladesh

• Youth
• Older persons
• Women
• People with disabilities
• The unemployed
• The poor
• Remote and rural communities
• Citizens of Bangladesh

If a concept or project has been proven to work in one community or region, it can often be exported to other communities or regions in the same country or abroad. While there are, of course, vast differences between countries and even between different parts of the same country, a good project will often be capable of being replicated elsewhere. We strongly believe that the National e-Service bus can be replicated in other departments/countries. As different country/organization have different policies but this system can be replicated with some modification. ICT Ministry, in collaboration with Prime Minister’s office, has taken initiative to introduce sectorial service bus for other ministries and divisions of the country.

We followed BNDA (Bangladesh National Digital Architecture) framework in developing and maintenance of this platform. BNDA framework, which is developed in adherence to the TOGAF standard, promotes development and implementation of shared services. BCC and ICT Ministry has planned to include passport, tax payer database, driving license etc with National e-service bus in upcoming days.

Many countries have been implementing TOGAF standard. And TOGAF emphasizes the principles of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). Since the initiative is primarily a middleware platform, it can be easily replicated to other countries also. So it may need some minor modification or customization for other countries. BCC is always ready to take the responsibility of tweaking the system for replicating other countries.

Sustainability can be considered as the ability of the system to continue its operational activities far into the future. Eventually, all projects have to finish, but the consequences of the project need to continue. Peoples want to see how the platform/system and its impact will outlive their direct involvement in the system. A project can be sustainable in three main categories: organizational, financial, and community sustainability.

Organizational: ICT ministry and BCC is spearheading continuation and expansion of National e-Service Bus. National e-service bus is hosted in National Data Center (maintained by BCC) and carrying out operation & maintenance with the help of regular employees and consultants. BCC has taken initiative to establish policy for usage of National e-service bus. Again, ICT ministry is drafting act for Digital Services. Once the act and policy is activated, it will ensure continuing operation.

Financial: BCC is providing managed service for organizations using National e-Service Bus. It has started as a revenue generating source through imparting services. For example, BCC takes service charge from organizations for connecting services, load balancing the connected services etc. Again, BCC has taken permission that includes revenue sharing provision for owner of govt databases. So, it can act as a revenue generating source for owner organizations. It proves the system can be financially sustainable.

Community: We are seeing positive response from users (govt organizations, health departments, Porichoy etc ) for National e-Service Bus. These are able to save effort & expenditure that was otherwise needed for doing identity verification related tasks manually. National e-service bus has plan to expand more services like BIN verification, passport verifications, driving license verification and so on for the users. So it can be opined that it's community base is increasing.

National e-service bus is creating stories for organizations. It’s enabling govt organizations to deliver services for citizens in shorter time. It’s helping non-Govt organizations to keep momentum in their business by minimizing customer acquisition time. It has created precedence of utilizing ICT applications in identity management sector. Transparency is built-in in operational mechanism of National e-Service Bus. Because such service must provide correct and authentic data and information. National e-Service Bus doesn’t cache any data/info during API call execution. National e-service bus operates by interaction and collaboration of various stakeholders of different ministries, such as, BCC, NID Wing, Election Commission, National Board of Revenue, Bangladesh Telecom Regulatory Authority, Office of Registrar General, Health Ministry and so on. So it has created precedence of collaboration & partnership among users of different ministries in delivering citizen service.