Making one-stop shops work: evidence from Bangladesh and Somaliland

One-stop shops frequently disappoint in practice. Our experience designing OSS programs in Bangladesh and Somaliland offers hard-won lessons about what actually makes them work.

The promise and the problem

The appeal of the one-stop shop model is real. In Bangladesh, investors were required to interact with more than 23 public institutions before officially commencing operations. In Somaliland, entrepreneurs faced separate visits to multiple ministries just to register and license a new business. The problem is that one-stop shops are often designed as buildings rather than systems. A ministry designates a room, brings in staff from different agencies, and announces that businesses can now access services in one place. But if the underlying processes have not been redesigned, if agencies have not transferred genuine authority, if back-office workflows are still manual and disconnected, and if there is no mechanism to enforce service standards — the one-stop shop is a facade.

What we learned in Bangladesh

The Bangladesh BIDA One Stop Shop project was one of the most comprehensive investor service reform programs we have delivered. We mapped and reengineered 32 regulatory processes across 11 agencies. The most important design principle: the OSS must have genuine authority — not just physical presence. Each participating agency was required to delegate decision-making authority to the OSS, so that approvals could actually be processed within the portal. We designed service level agreements with legally binding processing time targets, monitoring dashboards, and escalation mechanisms.

What we learned in Somaliland

The Somaliland OSBSC presented different challenges: a fragile, post-conflict jurisdiction with limited digital infrastructure and constrained institutional capacity. The critical innovation was the common business database and unique identification number system. By creating a single record for each registered business, shared across multiple ministries and agencies, we eliminated the duplication at the heart of the problem.

Five conditions for a one-stop shop that works

Genuine authority: participating agencies must delegate real decision-making power. Redesigned processes: underlying procedures must be simplified before the OSS is built. Enforceable service standards: SLAs with monitoring and consequences are not optional. Back-office integration: agencies must share data and systems, not just a building. Sustained change management: the period after launch is as critical as design and build — without active management, agencies revert to old behaviors.

Conclusion

One-stop shops remain a powerful tool for investment climate reform when designed and implemented correctly. The experience from Bangladesh and Somaliland demonstrates that success depends not on the sophistication of the technology but on the fundamentals: genuine authority, redesigned processes, enforceable standards, back-office integration, and the organizational will to manage the change.