TechViewsNational ICT Roadmap
Another light at the end of the tunnel
In October 2002, a national ICT policy was approved with the aim of building an ICT-driven nation, comprising a knowledge-based society, by the year 2006. Even after two years, we have not been able to achieve the goals and very little has been done. So far, only a few government ministries and offices have attained limited e-government capability and adopted ICT in their work processes. Keeping this in mind, Bangladesh Computer Council (BCC) is developing a national ICT roadmap/action plan for the first time in Bangladesh, with the help of the World Bank's 'Support for Development of Public Sector Use of ICT under EMTAP' project. Government for the Third Millennium (gov3), a global strategic consultancy company that helps governments to accelerate the benefits of IT-enabled change and has experience in working with over 30 countries, is acting as project consultant for the roadmap. Their main objective is to build a short, medium and long-term national ICT action plan or road map for Bangladesh on the basis of National ICT Policy 2002 that provides detailed action plan for the use of ICT in Bangladesh's development efforts and development of the local ICT sector as a whole and in particular spheres. Based on the synopsis of the action plan, a discussion was held at the BCC premises on April 1. Members of the local business community and civil society were present at the session. Chris Parker, managing partner of gov3 limited, identified several problems that hindered the ability to transform the 2002 ICT policy into action, which includes unclear and un-coordinated governance structures and processes, lack of effective cross government programme management, lack of skills and capabilities. "It was an implementation approach which has ended to be focused on government delivery rather than facilitation and enablement of private and voluntary sector solutions," he said. He mentioned that the recently published e-government Horizon report , while setting out an excellent analysis of Bangladesh's problems and recommending many sensible actions to address them, suffered like previous government reports in not giving a clear sense of priorities amongst the actions or a plan for implementing them. Parker also presented a set of recommendations for the ICT roadmap. They include empowering users by providing easy and affordable access to ICT, motivating them so that they see real benefits from ICT which are directly relevant to their livelihood, making them feel confident in ICT skills and making them feel trusted and secured, transforming the government by implementing portal-based services for different segments, growing the ITEC sector in hardware, software, applications and digital content development, enabling the market with legal, fiscal and regulatory framework, and working on leadership and governance. Elizabeth Muller, director of Emerging Markets, were also present at the session and presented an introductory paper on the project where she mentioned that Bangladesh is falling behind compared to other countries in the region on key Information Society indicators except for the mobile phone use, which has exploded since 2001. She also mentioned that the slow progress is not because Bangladesh lacks major strengths to build on or due to lack of attention, rather the problems lie in institutional and governance constraints in taking effective government action. Forkan Bin Quashem, CEO, Spectrum Engineers and Consortium Limited, said "In order to implement the plan, the partnership of the private sector with the government is mandatory." Almas Kabir, CEO, MetroNet said, "The price of broadband internet should be slashed down." Project Director Dr Kamal Uddin Ahmed was also present.
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