Like the seed-fertiliser-water technology of the 1980s that revolutionised rice productivity and agriculture in Bangladesh, the ICT revolution touched off by the Digital Bangladesh initiative of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina in 2009 holds the promise of lifting factor productivity and citizen welfare through the adoption of mobile technology. Bangladesh has already made good progress during the Sixth Plan. The potential benefits for the poor are particularly noteworthy. By transferring knowledge, by facilitating financial transactions, by eliminating needless intermediation in transactions, and by enhancing and speeding up access to a range of public and privately provided services, the ICT revolution is contributing to lower production and selling costs for the poor. This in turn is increasing their productivity and income, thereby contributing to poverty reduction and improvement in mass welfare.
Read more: BD: Removing the tax constraint to ICT revolution
The government has started a process to provide e-services in issuance of visas and work permits to the foreign investors aiming to woo foreign investment.
To this effect, Board of Investment (BoI) has adopted a pilot project in November 2014 to execute the services and got a satisfactory response from the investors.
Consultant to the BoI of the e-services, Md Sirajul Islam disclosed this while giving a presentation on the service at the annual general meeting of France-Bangladesh Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCIFB) Monday.
Serving the citizens through electronic governance or “eGovernance”, is more essential for the developing countries than forthe developed and less populousones. The government in a densely populous country like Bangladesh can better serve the citizens through Information and CommunicationTechnologies (ICTs). Branding the country as Digital Bangladesh might have drawn the attention of local and international communities, but the country's success in adopting eGovernance is not noticeable if compared to some provinces of theneighboring country, India.
During the last parliamentary election of India, the successful project 'SWAGAT' in Gujarat often came to the limelight because it made the BJP leader, Narendra Modi,a hero of India,who was later voted as Prime Minister of one of the biggest countries of the world. Actually, SWAGAT is almost synonymous to the eGovernance services; people of the region arejust a click away from accessing the citizen services.
Bangladesh is looking towards India's flagship schemes of national population registration (NPR) and Aadhaar card.
Wary of increasing threats to its internal security and to implement targeted subsidy schemes for the benefit of its poverty ridden population, Bangladesh is looking towards India's flagship schemes of national population registration (NPR) and Aadhaar card.
Read more: Bangladesh seeks India's help to implement NPR like scheme
The US Secretary of State in the 70s, Dr Henry Kissinger, after the birth of our nation, infamously dubbed Bangladesh as a 'bottomless basket' because it was considered to be a country with no hope. Some forty years later, it is still a poor nation with low literacy and an international image featuring all forms of disasters, natural and man-made.
But then again, Bangladesh - the country of 'impossible attainments'–has become the world's fifth fastest growing economy with a consistent GDP growth rate of around 6% for the last few years in a world which has seen near-zero or negative growth. Not known to many people, it has also become the world's 45th largest economy with a GDP size of USD 286 billion.With the capital Dhaka ranking third in freelance IT and IT-enabled services outsourcing globally, with over 120 million mobile phone users, 43 million internet users, 8 million Facebook users (one new Facebook user being added every twenty seconds), 99% geographical coverage in voice and data connectivity (mostly through wireless networks), and over 5,000 service access points where the citizens receive over sixty government and private services electronically, the country is on the fast lane towards massive digitisation. The government service delivery mechanism is reinventing itself to become more citizen-centric and responsive to citizens' needs. In spite of overwhelming odds, the government officials are showing a distinct change in 'mind-set' to become more digitally oriented and service focused.