Asian Studies

Social Media for Government in Bangladesh An Analysis of Users' Perception

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K. M. Mahiuddin
Mujahidul Islam
Riadul Islam Sakib

Abstract

Rise of social media has made significant change in public service delivery world wide Similarly, a number of government departments in Bangladesh have started using social media to improve public service deliverysince September 2013 by creating an open facebook group named "Pallic Service Innovation Bangladesh". As a result, government officials and citizens are interacting with each other regularly through thousands of public Facebook pages/groups. Therefore, the present paper attempted to examine the scope of social media use at the public sectors in Bangladesh for service delivery and improving government-citizen interaction. In doing so, we gathered data using both questionnaire survey, key informant interviews and focus group discussions. Our finding shows that government organisations are using Facebook pages and groups for internal communication and citizen engagementas well as internal communication, sharing and discussing service innovation, policy issues, new ideas and experiences among the different layers of government officers. The study reveals that organisational integration and behavioural pattern have positively been changed and in turn efficiency has been increased. Despite having some limitation we found that proper use of social media may reduce the gap between the government and the citizen.

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