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 committee is expected to submit the report to the Ministry of ICT on September 17, the officials added.
“We are planning to set up a new high capacity NDC because the web hosting capacity of the existing Data Centre at Bangladesh Computer Council (BCC) building is inadequate to accommodate all the present and upcoming e- services,” Secretary to the ICT Md. Nazrul Islam Khan (N I Khan) told BSS today.
The commencement of various e- services as well as advancement of digitisation in public and private sectors have created a huge demand for setting up a high capacity NDC to store, retrieval and simplify the collection of pertinent information about government and private organisations, he said.
N I Khan said before introducing e-services in all government offices by next year, first e-service introduction at Jessore District is delayed by three months due to lack of capacity both in terms of human resources and storage capacity of existing data centre located at BCC.
It has become necessary to fashion a huge state-of-the-art NDC for government websites, mail service, installation of Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) for introduction of digital signature and providing e-services to citizens’ door steps.
N I Khan said, “If Hyderabad could provide data centre service to United Arab Emirates (UAE) and US companies and earn foreign currencies, why not Bangladesh? Today many of our institutions are hosting their websites in the US or Europe, draining out hard earned foreign currencies.”
“Properly run, it could be a boon,” he said adding the NDC can contribute to the economy of the country and it’s possible to earn huge foreign currency by creating confidence at home and abroad.
Kamal Uddin Ahmed said there is a demand of over 50 thousand webs hosting at present in both public and private sectors in the country.
Earlier, a meeting was held with stakeholders at the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Ministry about the necessity of setting up an NDC with its Secretary Md. Nazrul Islam Khan in the chair.
Executive Director of BCC Ganendra Nath Saha, Policy Adviser to Access to Information (A2I) Programme Anir Chowdhury, People’s Perspective Specialist of A2I Naimuzzman Mukta, Head of IT of NCC Bank Tapan Kanti Sarkar, President of DOHA Tech New Media A K M Samsuddoha, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Update Solution Technologies Ltd. Shafkat Haider, CEO of PPP Office Syed Afsar H Uddin, Managing Director of Mango Tele Service Mir Masud Kabir were, among others, present.
The meeting agreed in principle to set up an NDC on PPP basis to carry forward the government’s plan to build a Digital Bangladesh as charted out in the Vision 2021.
Stressing the need for conducting a demand analysis Anir Chowdhury said, “if we could know the demand of web hosting and its commercial viability it would be easy to set up NDC with the right capacity.”
Tapan Kanti Sarkar said if the government wants to go for setting up an NDC on PPP basis there is a need for ‘trust building’ as the private organisations will ask for security of their information.
The government must offer a secure environment which can minimise the chance of a security breach, he added.
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Quelle/Source: daily sun, 15.09.2012