IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

Good governance is about the processes for making and implementing decisions. It's not about making 'correct' decisions, but about the best possible process for making those decisions. Good decision-making processes and, therefore, good governance, share several characteristics. They have a positive effect on various aspects of local government including consultation policies and practices, meeting procedures, service-quality protocols, conduct of councillors and officers, role clarification and good working relationship.

“Around 75 percent money of the annual development program is used for public procurement. People of the country are the source of all these money. The government is accountable to the people for ensuring standard of the procured goods and service and usage of the public money,” she said.

The prime minister said this while inaugurating the electronic government procurement (e-GP) at Bangabandhu International Conference Center (BICC).

Planning Minister AK Khandker, State Minister for Science and ICT Yeafesh Osman and World Bank Country Director Ellen Goldstein spoke at the function.

Three digital one-stop platforms -- Eksheba, Ekpay and Ekshop -- to enable people to get different government services and pay utility bills and fees were launched yesterday.

Prime Minister’s ICT Affairs Adviser Sajeeb Wazed Joy launched the platforms in a ceremony organised by the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) division at the ICT Tower in Dhaka.

The platforms were developed by the Access to Information (a2i) programme under the ICT division.

Furthermore, the mandatory provision for payment of Tk 1000 as advance tax is likely to be withdrawn from fiscal 2011-12 in order to reduce the hassle of the taxpayers at the time of obtaining the TIN.

The announcement to this effect is expected to be made through the budget for the upcoming fiscal that would be placed before parliament on June 9 next.

Harassment in issuance of TIN is considered one of the major hurdles to raising country's poor tax-gross domestic product (GDP) ratio.

They said the 13-member committee headed by Additional Secretary of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Kamal Uddin Ahmed formed on September 2 has prepared a report after reviewing the demand analysis for next 5 years, management arrangement and mode of operation on setting up an NDC.

The Ministry of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has already received 20 ideas about women development issues, including healthcare tips, poultry farming for women and safety issues, from the Department of Women Affairs at a function last week.

A number of citizen databases including the national voter list have already been prepared. But citizens still have to produce the same basic information already stored on those databases every time they seek any government services. Besides, it requires a lot of paperwork and time to process the applications for government services.

The project called “Leveraging ICT: Growth, Employment and Governance”, under the Ministry of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), will create 30,000 direct employment and 120,000 indirect employment in the country within five years, ICT Secretary Nazrul Islam Khan said at a seminar yesterday.

He said the draft regulations titled “e-Service Regulations 2013” which is now under process to launch anytime, has been prepared as per article 88 of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Act 2006.

The government has developed a model to simplify the existing process to deliver public services to the citizens aimed at saving their time, money and labour.

Access to Information (a2i) Programme has developed the model titled Service Process Simplification (SPS)' following the internationally recognized Business Process Reengineering (BPR) model to change the conventional system to deliver public services to citizens.

Making the disclosure at the concluding day session of a five-day training programme on 'Managing Technology for eGovernment' in the city on Thursday, a2i Project Director Kabir Bin Anwar said, "Initially, we're going to simplify the process to grant pension for the primary school teachers who have to frequently visit the department concerned and spend money to get pension."

"We want to turn the country's young generation into human resources as there is a huge demand of such manpower at home and abroad," she said, adding it would contribute significantly to the export of human resources.

While inaugurating the 5th e-Asia, the premiere ICT event of Asia, the Prime Minister also said 20,000 more multimedia classrooms will be set up in the country by 2012 in line with the present government's 'Digital Bangladesh' programme.

State minister for post, telecommunication and information and communication technology Zunaid Ahmed Palak, MP, on Thursday said that the government had been working to build Rajshahi as modern, time-fitting and smart city.

‘Around a decade ago, we had many dreams but now we see that many of those dreams have been materialised. Preliminary, it was very challenging to finish the works but as a result of farsighted development policies of the government we have achieved success,’ he added.

Apart from several positive steps taken by the ICT Ministry, most of the automation projects are limited to purchasing computer hardware, opening websites and training centres, ICT professionals alleged.

e-government is yet to be a reality while e-commerce and e-services have been developed by the private sector at their own initiative forced by accelerating global competition.

The home ministry is going high-tech to rid itself of the bureaucratic tangle that often bogs it down and to let people know about the status of their files or services they sought from the ministry.

The ministry is going to digitise its everyday functioning in order to move towards e-governance. It believes this step would rid the ministry of the red tape menace and let it be more transparent to people.

They discussed about digital signature, digital certificate and public-key infrastructure (PKI) which are key elements for promoting e-procurement, e-transaction, e-commerce, online income tax return and confidential data transfer.

Controller of Certifying Authority arranged the workshop on e-Governance and Digital Signiture at the auditorium of Bangladesh Computer Council on Monday. The workshop was divided into two parts-inaugural and technical.

Bangladeshi ICT entrepreneurs Saturday sought training and business supports from their Indian counterparts for the betterment of the sector in Bangladesh.

They stressed the need for cooperation from the entrepreneurs of the neighbouring country, which is leading the ICT business globally, at a seminar on “ICT Development in Bangladesh: Opportunities and Challenges” in Dhaka.

The State Minister for Information and Communication Technology Zunaid Ahmed Palak has said that the implementation of e-government has revolutionized the country.

He said 52,000 websites, 7 million free text subscriptions in Corona, digital education platform, more than 1.3 million dependable export earnings, 333, 999 BD police, virtual courts, 4 crore e-documents, and 8,000 docs, including use of e-office management system in Corona. Through the Prime Minister’s participation in the meeting of the Cabinet ECNEC, etc., all e-government has been made possible.

Internet is an amazing technological innovation that has revolutionised the entire range of economic, social and personal interactions. Internet merges notable features of traditional media like broadcasting and telecommunications. Internet has removed the barriers to information access and communication in ways that has never been experienced before in human history.

Internet is a uniquely universal platform that uses the same standards in every country. Every user can interact with every other user regardless of geographic location. Open access to the Internet has revolutionised lifestyles. Economic impact made by the Internet over the past decades has been quite massive. Research by the World Bank in 2009 found that for every 10 percentage point increase in the number of high-speed internet connections in developing countries, there was an increase of 1.3 percentage points in economic growth.

They also urged their Indian counterparts to assist Bangladesh in winning a larger share of the global IT business.

Bangladesh has a huge shortage of skilled IT professionals as the educational institutions in the country cannot produce the expected number of skilled people, said Mustafa Jabbar, president of Bangladesh Computer Samity (BCS), the national association of ICT companies.