How digitised are we?
Automation of Chittagong customs has made the work flow process much simpler Photo: ZOBAER HOSSAIN SIKDER
Changing and developing the standard of lifestyle, increasing per capita income and creating jobs are the key issues of 'Digital Bangladesh' targeted to be achieved through knowledge based society driven by information and communication technology (ICT). The powerful strides of ICT are helping many countries to halve the financial and social backlog. Unfortunately, Bangladesh could not scale like those countries, which achieved the ubiquitous advancements in all sectors leveraging the ICT. So comes the vision of 'Digital Bangladesh', the target is set to be achieved by 2021. According to the experts, ICT reduces costs, improves efficiency, saves time, raises confidence level among the employees through easy replication of the process. Therefore, we need the service delivery sectors like tax department, water supply, gas, police, land department, city corporation, electricity, banks, customs, insurance etc. fully digitised. The government has approved an ICT Policy 2009 with 306 action items. Accordingly, the country now has short term, mid term and long term strategic themes with an aim to establish good and transparent governance, develop skilled manpower, ensure the service available to the citizen through public-private partnership and transform Bangladesh into a middle income country by 2021 and a developed country within thirty years. Addressing a query -- how we can achieve this -- the experts say the country has to have the proper connectivity, huge opportunities of employments so that citizens can perform the outsourced jobs at home and thus the ICT can play a pivotal role. Munir Hasan, a consultant to the Ministry of Science and ICT, said, "A personal computer used to cost $3000 in 1984 and its operating system's cost was only $1. But now a far better pc with very good performance costs less than $1000 but the operating system's cost increased to $200. That means there is no substitute to knowledge to develop a nation. So, we need ICT to make ourselves a middle income country." Little advancement in different sectors has already been achieved after the government set the vision of 'Digital Bangladesh' by 2021. As the experts said, the country already has specific plan and legal framework. Now it needs to create an integrated atmosphere in the work place so that the human creativity is flourished properly. The government has already recommended adaptation of Unicode for the standard Bangla computing and also developed the national web portal (www.bangladesh.gov.bd) in Bangla language apart from English. Web portals for 64 districts have also been developed. The information of passport and tax of land development has been made easy through publishing the websites of 19 district administrations. It is also decided to conduct research to launch Bangla OCR. The government has already distributed laptops with internet to the deputy commissioners and upazila nirbahi officers (UNO) so that they can communicate with the central government any time. They have also been advised to correspond with the higher authorities through e-mail. To increase the internet and intranet connectivity, the bandwidth fee has already been slashed 33 percent and the internet through cell phones has been introduced. The government has also sped up the service delivery to the doorsteps using the ICT. The citizens of Dhaka, Sylhet, Pabna, Rajshahi can pay the electricity bill, and gas bill using the cell phone and this is how the work hour is saved. People can now check the availability of train ticket and schedule through cell phones. The disaster management authority has started circulating the disaster information via cell phone in Sirajganj and Cox's Bazar districts. As a recent advancement in education sector, the Shahjalal University of Science and Technology completed its admission process using ICT through cell phone. The admission test result for government medical colleges was also published over cell phone, first of its kind. The textbooks are now available in internet (www.nctb.gov.bd) from where the school students can download them for free. Almost 800 health centres across the country are now connected through the internet and mobile phone. So the video conferencing between the district health offices or headquarters and the physicians is now possible. There are more than 2,300 information centres, community e-centres and telecentres across the country to avail all necessary information. The benchmark advancement was done through making the Chittagong Customs House fully automatic -- a clear indication of transforming an organisation digitised to ease the process and serve the people better. The Dhaka Customs House is also running the automation in trail basis. The Bangladesh Bank also started the test run of its automated clearing house. The non-government initiatives are also remarkable to achieve the target of Digital Bangladesh. Digital festivals, IT fair, Information festivals were arranged by Bangladesh Computer Samity, BASIS and Bangladesh Open Source Network. Mobile handset manufacturer Nokia also helped creating the awareness for 'Digital Bangladesh'. The experts termed all the ICT leveraging activities in our daily life a positive growth for the country.
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