IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

Use of Information Communication Technology (ICT) is being increased at the educational institutions for improving standard of education and teachers must be involved in the process to achieve the standard, they added, reports BSS.

In the telemedicine system, patients with the payment of Tk 200 to Tk 300 get live consultancy about their disease through Digital Imaging and Communication in Telemedicine (DICOT) as well as Telemedicine Information, Management and Education System (TIMES).

At the end of consultation, the patients get printed prescription for buying medicine.

It could be the key to enabling 5G and ensuring Bangladesh's complete digital transformation

Our beloved mother Earth -- a "pale blue dot" in the universe -- is now exploding with over 8 billion people, but there is only a limited amount of habitable land available. As a result of overpopulation, cities throughout the world face difficulties in meeting the needs of their citizens, such as providing seamless internet connectivity, 24-hour security, 360-degree advanced surveillance, robust networking, and quality citizen services. As people leave rural areas for a better standard of living and easier access to technology, this burden is also felt in the city.

In 2015, the government took several initiatives to materialise its dream of digital Bangladesh.

Online gateway to 25,000 government offices

At the beginning of 2015, a website has brought together 25,000 government offices through separate links, allowing people to access information or file complaints easily online. The website, National Web Portal of Bangladesh, is one of the largest of its kind in the world. The site, which works as a gateway to government portals, has more than 1.5 millions content items, including 40,000 photos of famous or historical places in the country.

Planning to curb all kinds of telephony crimes, cellular phone operators in the country are going to start trial of biometrics SIM registration system tomorrow.

Bangladesh as the second country has taken the initiative to introduce the human body-based indentifying system to ensure the ownership of mobile phone number, said officials of posts and telecommunications division.

Through an innovative, inclusive bottom-up approach an initial round of 56 e-services were proposed and some have become very successful, attracting partnerships and proving their sustainability, said the evaluation report submitted to UNDP recently.

More than 80 countries have introduced one-stop shops—one-door or single-window service delivery outlets, community or citizen information and service centres, e-government web portals—to reduce corruption by simplifying public service delivery processes and making them citizen-friendly.

Around the world, these are reducing corruption and introducing greater service delivery efficiency. For example, as a result of service centres in India, citizens reported 50 percent less chance of encountering a demand for bribe. In Georgia, citizen satisfaction with regard to public services shot up to 92 percent from 10 percent.

New realities have arisen in the last two years, and new strategies have been adopted by economies around the world to cope with the changed realities. Renewed significance has been attached to digital transformation and equipping the population with the right set of skills to prepare them for the new world has been a priority; and with over 4.6 billion people, the Asia Pacific region has been doing considerably well in terms of digital transformation.

The pandemic has expedited this process by about seven years. As one of the major players in the region, Bangladesh is also doing considerably well as far as digital preparedness is concerned.

Telecommunications experts have showed that fatality rate is less in those countries that use modern tools in their road management system.

The Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) organised the seminar at the Bangabandhu International Conference Centre marking the World Telecommunication and Information Society Day (WTISD).

Learning Globally, and Applying Locally In the Light of World Town Planning Day 2023

World Town Planning Day, also known as "World Urbanism Day," aims to encourage community planning to address diverse environmental and socio-economic factors involved in the development of a town. The 74th World Town Planning Day 2023 is being celebrated worldwide on November 08 with the theme 'Learn Globally, Apply Locally.'

According to the 2023 IMD Smart City Index, Singapore is ranked as the 7th smartest in the world, and topped among the smart cities in the Asian subcontinent.

It is hardly a subject that is discussed in the public domain nowadays, but one recalls “Digital Bangladesh” being the centrepiece of the ruling party's electoral campaign in 2008 and onwards. The aim was to transform the bureaucracy-ridden system, making it faster, more efficient and of course less prone to graft. But such a grandiose mission, till now, remains largely unaccomplished.

The finance minister in his budget speech eight years ago promised to establish e-government—the use of information and communication technologies by the public service organisations—by 2014. It is 2018, and yet Ahsan H Mansur, executive director of the Policy Research Institute of Bangladesh, wouldn't give the government the pass mark for its digitisation efforts.

The Asia Foundation which conducted the study on the business environment in Bangladesh found only 69 of the 3,800 firms surveyed had at least one female owner.

The study shows that women are about 40 percent less likely to use the internet than men, irrespective of income and education status.

They diversified the use of internet services amid pandemic, survey finds

Women in Bangladesh have increased and diversified their use of mobile internet services ever since the Covid-19 outbreak began as social distancing restrictions in particular have led to a rise in video calls, social media use and viewing of online videos, according to a survey.

'The bank and the Bangladesh government will work jointly to implement both the health sector and the government procurement standard development projects'

The World Bank (WB) has decided to provide $570 million to help improve the Bangaldesh’s health sector and upgrade the standard of procurement for different projects under the sector.

Set against the backdrop of a continuing health crisis, governments and organisations are reinvigorating conversations about how smart city technologies can be leveraged to mitigate or avoid future disruptions. In particular, the focus is on how critical data can be used to anticipate events and allocate resources to help build urban resiliency.

The pandemic has brought forward new perceptions into the long-term sustainability of urban metropolises and their rapid urbanisation. Cities continue to attract an influx of people for various reasons—from the promise of better job opportunities to an improved quality of life – leading the United Nations to estimate that 68% (1) of the world’s population will live in urban areas by 2050. However, the resulting high population densities provide the ideal conditions for a virus to spread rapidly.

Imagine a city where traffic congestion, housing issues, waste management, pollution control, and even crime prevention are seamlessly managed on a single screen.

This vision is no longer futuristic but a reality, thanks to Huawei's groundbreaking "One Screen City 360 Degrees" solution.

During a recent visit to Huawei's Executive Briefing Center in Beijing, a delegation of Bangladeshi journalists, including BSS correspondent, was introduced to the intricacies of this innovative system.

The Indian information technology (IT) industry wants to share its experience with Bangladesh to explore both-way potentials through bilateral partnership and cooperation.

To this effect, the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) wants to set up a skill development institute in Bangladesh in collaboration with the Bangladesh government, S Radhakrishnan, Chairman of the Eastern Region of CII said at a press conference on Saturday.

The "One City One Network" solution integrates various city services into an all-in-one smart landscape, offering residents and city officials a comprehensive approach to urban management

This once-futuristic vision is now a reality, thanks to Huawei's groundbreaking "One City One Network" solution. The solution integrates various city services into an all-in-one smart landscape, offering residents and city officials a comprehensive approach to urban management.

The options to overcome the odds to bring about a revolutionary change in rural lifestyle in terms of internet use, telemedicine help and e-education are quite a few and some of them could be addressed through budgetary measures.

Finance Minister AMA Muhith proposed an additional allocation of Tk500m for a crash-training programme to develop as many as 10,000 IT professionals in the next two years. The proposal comes despite the fact that the government is yet to release any amount from the Tk7bn ICT development fund promised three years back.

The minister in his budget proposal yesterday also presented a booklet titled “Journey towards a Digital Bangladesh: Update 2013”, which showed that the government has stepped back three years from its promise to bring multimedia class rooms in every schools from 2015.