THE unauthorised exposure of personal data of roughly 14,000 journalists through an Election Commission web application is not merely an embarrassing technical failure. It is also a revealing moment in digital trajectory that exposes the gap between technological ambitions and the institutional discipline required.
The application at hand was not a casual public portal. It was designed to collect sensitive personal information from journalists seeking cards for the coverage of the national elections. That such a system could be compromised so easily and met with an administrative indifference raises concern that go far beyond a single breach. It speaks of a software development culture that privileges visual completion over structural integrity and a bureaucratic response mechanism that treats cyber incidents as public relations inconveniences rather than national security events.
The incident appears to have stemmed from a basic authorisation flaw, one of the most well-documented and preventable classes of web vulnerabilities. Preliminary reports suggest that by manipulating a web address path, a user could increase privileges and access restricted administrative data. Whether the information was openly accessible or exposed only to logged-in users with lower privileges remains unclear; but, the distinction matters. It determines whether this was a reckless exposure or an active breach. Yet, this uncertainty is telling. In a system that handled the data of thousands of journalists, there appears to have been no immediate institutional explanation about what went wrong, how severe it was or who were affected.
That absence of urgency was mirrored in the administrative response. When questioned, a senior Election Commission official suggested that an assessment would be made the next day. In any other domain involving sensitive personal data, banking, aviation or health, such a reaction would be unthinkable. Cybersecurity incidents are time-sensitive by definition. Delay is not neutrality; it is exposure.
This response shows a deep structural problem. Digital governance in Bangladesh has advanced rapidly in form but slowly in substance. Over a decade, the pursuit of ‘digital Bangladesh’ incentivised speed, visibility and rollout metrics. Government software projects were often judged by how quickly they could be launched and how polished they appeared to users. Security testing, architectural resilience and failure modelling were treated as optional add-ons — useful, if time allowed, and dispensable, if deadlines loomed.
The result is a development ecosystem trapped in what engineers recognise as the ‘aesthetic trap.’ Applications are designed to work when users behave exactly as expected, but not when they deviate, experiment or act maliciously. Quality assurance teams are constrained by timelines that reward confirmation over interrogation. Testing becomes an exercise in validation rather than exploration. Software ‘works’ until it does not.
Yet, cyber security is defined precisely by what happens when things go wrong. A secure system is not one that performs smoothly under ideal conditions, but one that resists misuse, anticipates error and limits damage when defences fail. That frame of mind, adversarial, sceptical and failure-oriented, remains largely absent from public-sector software development in Bangladesh. This absence is not merely technical. It is administrative.
The effectiveness of any cyber security framework ultimately depends on leadership that understands risk, responds decisively and treats digital infrastructure as critical public assets. The Election Commission incident suggests that this understanding has not yet taken root at the highest levels. When senior officials respond to potential data exposure with procedural delay rather than immediate containment, one of three explanations applies: they do not grasp the severity of the threat, they grasp it but do not prioritise its consequences for those affected or they operate within a system where accountability is diffuse and questioning authority is discouraged. None of these explanations is assuring.
What is particularly troubling is the category of data involved. Journalists occupy a uniquely vulnerable position in Bangladesh’s political environment. Their personal information — addresses, identification details and contact numbers — cannot be treated as routine administrative records. Any exposure carries implications for safety, surveillance and intimidation. In this context, a data breach is not a neutral technical event but is a risk multiplier.
The problem, however, does not begin or end with the Election Commission. At its core lies a broader failure to embed adversarial thinking into software development and public administration. Many vulnerabilities of this nature do not require advanced tools or costly penetration testing to detect. They require time, institutional patience and a testing culture that encourages discomfort. Exploratory testing, where testers deliberately step outside expected workflows and attempt to break systems, remains rare in government projects. When schedules are compressed and success is measured by delivery rather than durability, such practices are the first to be abandoned.
Critical systems demand a different approach. Internationally, high-risk digital deployments often adopt ‘war room’ models during final releases, bringing developers, testers, architects and administrators together to stress-test systems under real-world conditions. Failures are not treated as embarrassment but as information. In Bangladesh, by contrast, failure is something to be hidden, deferred or reclassified.
Equally neglected is post-incident forensics. A credible response to a breach requires immediate log preservation, traffic analysis and independent forensic investigation to establish whether data were merely exposed or actively exfiltrated. This assumes that logs exist, are intact and are protected from administrative interference. In many public institutions, it is unclear whether such forensic readiness at all exists. Without it, claims that ‘no data were stolen’ are assertions, not conclusions.
The absence of a robust forensic culture reflects another institutional weakness: accountability. When cyber incidents occur, responsibility often dissolves into committees, statements and silence. There are few consequences for poor procurement decisions, inadequate oversight or negligent risk management. Senior officials are rarely trained to treat cyber security as an element of national security rather than an information technology inconvenience.
This matters because digital transformation without accountability merely digitises vulnerability. The promise of ‘a smart Bangladesh’ cannot be realised on brittle foundations. Technology does not compensate for institutional weakness; it amplifies it. Reform, therefore, must operate on several levels.
Software development for public institutions must be reoriented away from speed and surface appeal toward resilience and risk anticipation. Testing teams must be empowered, not compressed. Security review should be mandatory, iterative and adversarial. Procurement contracts must reward robustness, not just delivery.
Administratively, cyber incidents must trigger immediate, standardised emergency protocols, including technical containment, forensic analysis and transparent disclosure. Senior officials must be trained to recognise digital risk and respond accordingly. Delay must no longer be an acceptable default. Finally, accountability must be enforced. Public administration reform cannot stop at ethics and efficiency. It must extend to digital responsibility. Citizens’ data are not abstract assets. They are extensions to personal safety, dignity and trust.
Bangladesh’s political history has repeatedly showed that institutional neglect accumulates quietly before erupting visibly. The July uprising was not spontaneous. It was the product of long-ignored failures of accountability. Digital governance is no different.
If the technological future continues to be built on hurried code, cosmetic progress and administrative indifference, it will reproduce the very fragility it claims to overcome. Digital transformation without discipline does not modernise the state. It merely gives old failures new interfaces.
Ishtiaque Foysol is a freelance software tester.
