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The Bangladesh National Biometric Database: A Transferable Success?

  • Conference paper
Book cover Electronic Government and the Information Systems Perspective (EGOVIS 2010)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNISA,volume 6267))

Abstract

Having a reliable voter list for conducting free and fair elections in Bangladesh was earlier considered unachievable due to political instability, widespread corruption, and weak and demoralized leadership. However, in 2008 the PERP project succeeded in building the world’s currently largest biometric database covering the entire Bangladeshi voting age population, 80 million people. This paper describes the PERP project as well as the history of failed projects and analyses success factors based on the IS implementation literature. This is an interpretive case study where both primary and secondary data have been used. The key finding is that the major reason behind the success was to get the project done in a ‘politically controlled’ environment where the people worked in a highly structured management system following a concrete and realistic roadmap. The implications of this finding are discussed.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Swedish Business School, Örebro University, Fakultetsgatan 1, 70182, Örebro, Sweden

    M. Sirajul Islam & Åke Grönlund

Authors
  1. M. Sirajul Islam
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  2. Åke Grönlund
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Applied ICT (CAICT) and Copenhagen Business School (CBS), Howitzvej 60, 2000, Frederiksberg, Denmark

    Kim Normann Andersen

  2. Institute of Legal Information, Theory and Techniques, ITTIG-CNR, Via dei Barucci 20, 50127, Florence, Italy

    Enrico Francesconi

  3. ESI/Informatics, Örebro University, 701 82, Örebro, Sweden

    Åke Grönlund

  4. Faculty of Law, Leibniz Center for Law, University of Amsterdam, P.O.Box 1030, 1000, Amsterdam, BA, The Netherlands

    Tom M. van Engers

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Sirajul Islam, M., Grönlund, Å. (2010). The Bangladesh National Biometric Database: A Transferable Success?. In: Andersen, K.N., Francesconi, E., Grönlund, Å., van Engers, T.M. (eds) Electronic Government and the Information Systems Perspective. EGOVIS 2010. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 6267. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-15172-9_19

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-15172-9_19

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-15171-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-15172-9

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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