It's not a story, it's true

Digital Bangladesh: The dream is now a reality

A few days ago, my daughter, who had just passed SSC, suddenly asked me to buy a Teletalk SIM card. He said, now through the SIM of Teletalk, any student from any part of the country can apply for admission in any college at home. Then I remembered how difficult it was to apply for admission to college in our time. We went to each college and submitted applications, bought separate forms and stood in line for hours and submitted the forms. There was no end to the cost and suffering. But nowadays, how easy it has become, the service has reached the doorsteps of the people.

On the eve of the 9th Parliamentary elections, the Hon'ble Prime Minister had announced 'Digital Bangladesh' as a charter of change of day. At first, some people did not believe in the digital Bangladesh issue properly, but some people had doubts and doubts about it. But the younger generation of Bangladesh took the matter with confidence and expressed their unwavering support for the announcement. Digital Bangladesh is not a matter of being pushed from above, but a matter emerging from the grassroots. As a result, it has been proved that Digital Bangladesh is not a myth.

On November 11, 2010, 4,547 unions in the country opened the 'Union Information and Service Centre', now known as the Union Digital Centre, to take government services to the marginalized communities. In order to empower women, it is mandatory to have a woman entrepreneur with a man in every digital centre. In these service centers, 60 types of services are available every day, from computer composing, to information related to admission in various schools and universities, from computer composition, to filling admission forms, birth registration, insurance, mobile banking, soil test and fertilizer recommendations for agriculture, payment of electricity bills, medical advice. Recently, passport and visa applications have started from some of the selected digital centers. Mobile banking services have been launched in 3,008 centres. A total of 20,22,436 workers travelling abroad have registered at the digital centre online. There are also a large number of women. As a result, it is seen that the digital center has developed as a grassroots service hub. After the Union Council, 407 digital centers have been opened in 11 city corporations and digital centers in 321 municipalities of the country. According to the ICT Division and A2I, on an average, 4 million people are getting services from these centres every month. According to A2I, entrepreneurs have earned Rs 140 crore from the digital centre.

There are now 43,000 offices connected to the world's largest government website, 'National Information Bureau'. More than 25,000 websites of ministries, departments, directorates, districts and upazilas and unions have been added to it. Through these websites, various activities of the concerned office are known. On November 14, 2011, district e-seva kendras were launched in all the districts of the country. Of these, more than 8 lakh services have been provided through the district e-seva kendra. Various services, including land parcels, are available from the e-seva kendra within three days without the nuisance of brokers.

E-procurement has been launched for contractors to submit tenders online. Now many ministries are calling for tenders online. Such initiatives are playing a role in preventing tender trade. The mobile court management system has been launched to digitize the functioning of the court. Through this initiative launched on a small scale, all the documents of the mobile court are being kept for online storage and use. In a joint initiative of the Ministry of Land, district administration and A2I project, all records are being digitized by SA, CS, BRS and Khatiyan copies. Of these, about 5.5 crore accounts have been digitized. The digital record room is going to be launched very soon. Of these, 23,20,000 records have been delivered to the digital system.

People-friendly e-filing system has been introduced to increase efficiency and transparency in government offices and to speed up the execution process. At present, e-filing systems have been introduced in 16 ministries, departments, including the Prime Minister's Office, and 64 deputy commissioner's offices and divisional commissioner's offices. A Tier-III data center has been set up in the ICT Division to store the digital information created as a result of digitizing various government activities. One of the targets of implementing Digital Bangladesh is the paperless office which can ensure this e-filing system.

The Service Innovation Fund has been created at the initiative of A2I to encourage innovation and make innovative ideas a reality. Organizations and individuals at all levels in Bangladesh can submit innovative initiatives that can reduce the number of times, money and travel in accessing services using technology online at any time of the year in a simple way. A maximum grant of up to Rs 25 lakh is provided to the selected ideas through a neutral selection system.  A2I is working on implementing 170 innovative ideas including multimedia talking book for visually challenged students through service innovation fund, online police clearance certificate, online environment clearance, age verification through mobile phones for prevention of child marriages, talking devices for speech impaired. The motto of 'INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY is not education, but information technology in education', includes multimedia classrooms for teachers and students, multimedia content created by teachers, teacher broadcasting, e-books, monitoring dashboards and digital multimedia talking books. In this model, trained teachers are creating content suitable for the students and using it in the class. Where it is possible to conduct student-centric class activities. Multimedia classrooms have been set up in 23,331 secondary and 15,000 primary schools. More than 180,000 teachers and 1,650 master-trainers have been trained in multimedia content creation. Hon'ble Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on December 30, 2017 handed over braille books and multimedia talking books to all the primary level digital books and visually-challenged students at the formal inauguration of the free book distribution programme to the students at Ganabhaban. A2I is created under the aegis of the Ministry of Agriculture with the objective of making the extension service accessible to the farmers in an effective and easy way by digitizing the agricultural extension services done by the 'Agriculture Portal'. The agriculture portal has been piloted and will be formally inaugurated very soon.  The philosophical foundation of Digital Bangladesh was snatched away by the father of the nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman through a long struggle for independence - in whose eyes the nation saw a firm commitment to self-reliance. He showed the nation the dream of a golden Bengal. In the same way, his privileged daughter, Hon'ble Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, has gifted the nation her election manifesto 'Din Badal'. After 50 years of independence, he has given a vision of where Bangladesh will go in 2021 and he has given the name 'Vision 2021' in the election manifesto. One of the goals of Vision 2021 is 'Digital Bangladesh', which was just a dream in 2008, and today it is a reality.

Md. Mostafizur Rahman

Author : Joint Secretary, Director, A2I Programme, Prime Minister's Office