Last week, the Cabinet Committee approved a Tk 2.81 billion (US$34.2 million) proposal for the procurement of equipment and services to start connecting all government entities to one state-of-the-art service delivery system.
This five-year project, called ‘Development of National ICT Infra-Network for Bangladesh Government (BanglaGovNet)’, was launched earlier as part of the ‘Digital Bangladesh’ action plan proposed by the Bangladesh Awami League in 2009.
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The Cabinet Committee on Government Purchase at a meeting held at the Cabinet Division with Agriculture Minister Matia Chowdhury in the chair approved a single bidder's proposal.
The tender proposal is titled 'Supply, installation, testing and commissioning of public network to connect government entity and provide application services on turnkey basis' which is being implemented under the project styled `Development of National ICT Infra-Network for Bangladesh Government (Bangla.gov.net).
Bangladesh is moving slowly up in ICT advancement, ranking 113th in the "networked readiness index" this year among 142 countries.
In the previous three years, Bangladesh progressed from 130th to 118th to 115th, according to the Global Information Technology Report: Living in a Hyperconnected World, prepared by the World Economic Forum (WEF).
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.
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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.