Although a national policy on ICT was adopted in 2002, the Ministry of Science and Information and Communication Technology had not been able to achieve the goals set out for e-governance in the policy. This led the present government to appoint Spinnovation and DNet (together with an international partner, Gov3 Limited) to develop a short, medium and long-term national ICT action plan or roadmap for Bangladesh on the basis of the National ICT Policy 2002.
Accordingly, recommendations on the national ICT roadmap have been made to the government. There are five key work-streams in the roadmap which are further broken down into 13 mission critical projects.
This week in StarTech, we have tried to find out expert opinions, from academia and industry, on this issue.
Before going to their opinions, let's first take a quick look at the five key work-streams that have been recommended by the consultants.
Empowering citizens
One of the objectives under this project is to ensure that by 2011 all Bangladeshis will have access to ICT and the skills to use them. The ICT roadmap plans to deliver this by building a national partnership to establish tele-centres. Another objective is to ensure that digital contents in Bangla are easily produced and uploaded. The ICT roadmap will deliver this through a new national strategy for e-Bangla.
Transforming public resources
To transform the government, Bangladesh needs to have e-readiness. There have to be citizen-centric e-services, and a high demand for them (through a rich mix of channels--including mobile phones, web, kiosks and service centres). Every ministry must develop and deliver plans for e-service investments.
Broadening the ICT sector
The issues impeding the growth of the hardware and software sectors should be resolved to broaden the ICT sector. International ICT trade and investment campaign must be undertaken to develop a globally recognised brand for Bangladesh as a centre for ICT investment, outsourcing and exports.
Enabling the market
Legal barriers to e-commerce must be removed and the necessary business changes put in place in the public and private sectors to take advantage of the new opportunities. The ICT roadmap plans to deliver this by establishing a certified authority to oversee the provision of digital certificates enabled by the ICT Act 2006, and development of a partnership with the banks to establish the business and technical infrastructure needed to make e-commerce and e-government transactions a reality.
Leadership and governance
Accountability for delivering all aspects of the roadmap and associated elements must be clear to all stakeholders for successful delivery of the roadmap, and effective structures and processes must be in place. A full-time "chief digital adviser" reporting directly to the taskforce and the chief adviser, supported by a small ICT roadmap program management office, should be there to strengthen the governance.
Now we move on to opinions expressed by Prof Muhammed Kaykobad of computer science and engineering department at Buet; Mustafa Jabbar, president, Bangladesh Computer Samity (BCS) and CEO, Ananda Computers; and Habibullah N Karim, president of BASIS.
StarTech wanted to know what they think should be the key ingredients in the ICT roadmap of Bangladesh and what, according to them, are the job prospects for private university graduates compared to those graduating from public institutions.
We also wanted to how the ACM-ICPC programming contests that are gaining fast popularity among computer science students in Bangladesh could improve their programming skills.
They also talked about the role of the government in decreasing the digital divide in the country.
Prof Kaykobad: Education, quality education, not only in ICT courses but in all levels of education should be the most important single ingredient for ICT roadmap of Bangladesh. The only surplus in the country is human beings that we cannot utilise for national prosperity and develop properly. Investment in education is unacceptably low and we possibly cannot foresee a change of attitude of our political leadership in this respect. Again application of ICT can make up the dearth of resources in education sector.
Investment in and priority of education have changed the fate of countries like South Korea and it is likely to have similar impact on our country as well. We should not loudly talk about globalisation. India never did.
We must be able to develop software systems of our own. If we cannot make it or maintain them, what is the point of using rocket technology? We should shun the path of being non-productive! We must produce at least as much as we consume. India has successfully done it.
After independence they failed to produce even blades of acceptable quality. Today, they are sending rockets to the moon. In early days they sacrificed the temptation of using quality Japanese products, from electronics to clothes. Now they have developed so much of expertise and we still remain mere consumers!
We must have software systems for ensuring e-governance and for other national interests by our professionals and will in no case allow different offices to keep black boxes developed by foreigners about which we hardly have any knowledge.
There is not much difference in job prospect of private and public universities. Since we are yet to generate sufficient amount of jobs inside the country, our entrepreneurs are quite often opting for low salary to quality of expertise. In fact, quality of education in our country is going down whether it is public or private.
These contests do improve problem-solving skill, creativity, programming skill and aptitude significantly. This is why world famous universities like MIT, CalTech, Berkeley, Stanford, Harvard are giving so much importance to ACM programming contests. Even if we do not understand its usefulness, we should just follow the footprint of these famous institutions even without understanding. World famous companies like Microsoft and Google are chasing after contestants with lucrative job offers.
The government can distribute computers and other ICT accessories to schools and colleges of remote areas so that ICT tolls like computer aided learning (CAL) packages can make up for deficiencies in experiences and quality of teachers. Schools and colleges can be enriched with an ICT lab where students of different classes will be learning different CAL packages to improve their understanding.
Mustafa Jabbar: In my opinion ICT roadmap should be targeted at establishing a digital Bangladesh which will lead to a knowledge-based society. The government should first set a target to change its own way of working. There should first be a digital government.
Unfortunately the graduates coming from these institutions are not learning state of the art technologies to work in our software industry. The syllabus, teaching method and the quality of teachers are key elements to improve the situation.
I do not feel that only this competition is improving the situation. Unless the basic education system is not improved, this will help may be only the BUET students.
The government should give computers to every kid and every house should be connected with broadband internet.
Habibullah N Karim: It must have an overarching vision for the nation which will be the beacon/goal of the roadmap.
It should have five components--legal framework issues resolution, ICT infrastructure development, e-government implementation with specific deliverables, making effective use of public-private-partnership opportunities for faster build up of ICT capacity and IT human resource development in sync with market demand.
The roadmap must be consistent with the overall ICT policy of the nation and must be implementation-focused.
The job prospects vary depending on the skillsets of the graduating students. For jobs that require broad technical excellence, graduates from public universities seem to do better but where communication skills are more important the private university graduates fare better. This is a rough generalisation and there are exceptions to both.
Such contests help build problem-solving skills and is a great confidence builder. These contests have proven a great boon for Bangladesh as these provided a platform for Bangladeshis to hone their skills in competition with the best from the whole world and we showed the world that we can hold our own when it comes to technical ability.
Broadband must be made available at very low cost at all parts of the country without any urban-rural discrimination. Modern WiMAX and 3G technologies will allow this at not-too-great a cost. Distance IT learning should be promoted to overcome the lack of qualified teachers in remote areas. The nearly 10,000 idle laptops lying with the Election Commission should be distributed to schools and colleges in remote areas for use by students.
The ICT roadmap must be done in consultation with all the stakeholders and shared with all sections of the society so that there is firm ownership of the goals and activities enumerated in the plan. The new ICT Policy 2008 recommended to the government by a committee comprising representatives of all stakeholder groups contains definitive action plans that can form the cornerstone of any ICT roadmap the nation wants to take on.
Information about the five work-streams are taken from: Article on ICT in Bangladesh by TIM Nurul Kabir ( September 18, 2008)
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Mahdin Mahboob
Quelle/Source: The Daily Star, 07.11.2008
