Turning digital outliers into digital adopters has become the prime challenge for building a Digital Bangladesh and affordable and reliable internet is a key to overcome this, State Minister for Information and Communication Technology Zunaid Ahmed Palak said,
Bangladesh has expanded high speed optical fiber network up to district and sub-district level small towns with more than two-thirds of its population living in rural areas, Palak said.
He said that Bangladesh is implementing a massive project under public private partnership to connect all the major rural growth centers with optical fiber by the end of 2018.
The State Minister made the remarks while addressing a panel session titled ‘How to manage digital citizen centric e-governance’ at ‘Tallinn e-Governance Conference 2018’ in Estonia on Tuesday (May 29), said a media release.
Palak said that incumbent government has been working relentlessly to buildup our Digital Bangladesh.
“Digital Bangladesh vision of our Prime Minister and its pillars are Human Resources Development, Connecting Citizens (0.4 percent in 2008, 53 percent now, 90 percent by 2021), Promoting e-governance (around 200 e-services now, 90 percent by 2021), Supporting IT industry and digital entrepreneurship (export volume: 26 mn in 2008, 800 mn now and 5 bn by 2021),” he added.
We have already introduced more than hundred e-services to disrupt the legacy system, which is heavily bureaucratic. To cut the redundant steps in the public service delivery system, we are doing Business Process Re-engineering before introducing an e-service.”
He said, “One thing is critically important in this borderless cyber world and that is collaboration - collaboration among the governments, collaboration between public sector and private sector, collaboration among government, industry and academia. All sorts of opportunities for extending collaboration should be explored and exercised. We are left with no option other than collaboration.”
“Countries like Estonia and Bangladesh belong to different stages of e-governance adoption matrix. However, we have one thing in common and that is strong political commitment to digitize our nation. Our people are also very smart and resilient to adopt new technologies. I’m confident someday we’ll be at same stage and we can mutually reinforce one another, if we collaborate,” Palak hoped.
Estonian President Kersti Kaljulaid inaugurated the two-day conference.
Moderated by Programme Director of Central e-Government, eGA Linnar Viik, Estonian Prime Minister Lucia Allen Chastanet, Director Smart Catalonia Daniel Marco and Minister for Digital Policies and Public Administration of the Government of Catalonia, Spain Jordi Puignero i Ferrer took part in the panel discussion.