Digital Bangladesh round the corner
Wednesday, 25 May 2011
Muhammad Arif Sadeq
In the midst of myriad of problems the dream of a digital Bangladesh within the fiftieth anniversary of our independence in 2021 injected some life to the frustrated young generation of Bangladesh. Though the scope of digital Bangladesh is not clearly defined yet, it is assumed that almost every sector of our life will get the benefit of the advancement of information and communications technology (ICT) and that the government wants to make Bangladesh fully digitized by 2021 through application of third generation ICT which we can have easy access to within that period. So, it is assumed the government has set its goal and is chalking out plans for moving forward towards achieving welfare and service oriented digital Bangladesh. As per the paper "Digital Bangladesh for Good Governance" presented recently by Md Abdul Karim, Principal Secretary, Prime Minister's Office, "The current government's Digital Bangladesh by 2021 vision proposes to mainstream ICT as a pro-poor tool to eradicate poverty, establish good governance, ensure social equity through quality education, healthcare and law enforcement for all, and prepare the people for climate change." Setting up of Union Information and Service Centres (UISC) can be seen as the first concrete step to bring the fruits of ICT to the doorsteps of underprivileged rural people. The service offered in these centres targets the propositions of vision 2021 mentioned above. Let us see how these centres can utilise the potentials to accelerate the pace of overall development of the country. There are 4501 UISCs in the remote areas of Bangladesh. An UISC has two entrepreneurs who serve the IT related service to the village people. UISC is situated mostly near Union Council complexes and village people come to the centre to services without any cost or with a nominal fee. The services include Internet Browsing: Village people are helped to browse websites which contain useful information for them. The service is provided at a nominal cost. Recently, two national online information encyclopedia www.infokosh. bangladesh.gov.bd and www.infocom.gov.bd have been published. From these websites entrepreneurs of UISCs provide vital information on the following sectors to the village people for taking conscious and right decisions. The sectors include Agriculture: With a view to attain self-sufficiency in food production by 2013, this sector naturally gets the highest emphasis in the Digital Bangladesh e-services strategy. Agriculture related web links may provide farmers with real time information related to integrated crop management, input availability and dosages, irrigation, soil quality, etc. at the community level. This will also help build capacity of farmers and extension workers through distant learning and by using locally relevant multimedia content, promoting market access with necessary information, organisinguniting farmers nationally to enable exchange of knowledge, information on health and education. Proper utilisation of the centres can strengthen the tele-medicine network (now available only in towns in the private sector at a high cost), and can help launch union-based mobile health units with prescription from doctors and ICT connectivity with specialised centres at district and divisional levels. ICT-based healthcare service delivery and capacity building of tens of thousands of semi-skilled health workers around the country can significantly reduce infant and maternal mortality, to the 2021 target levels of 1.5 per cent for both. ICT have been recognised as a useful mode to disseminate quality education throughout the country. Attractive e-learning environments in schools and distant learning through internet may increase the number of students. ICT-based education customised to the need and ability of the stake-holders (local students, job seekers, potential entrepreneurs, etc) providedto be provided in UISCs can help a lot for human resource development at the grass-roots level. The centres can be cheap source of e-book on child and mass-education that can be used by local institutions to provide child and mass-education in an effective manner. Students living in villages may be trained in UISCs to browse internet to search learning materials and useful articles with up-to-date information, the task that is being done by the cyber-cafes mostly situated in urban areas. The centres can also help in learning Communicative English online, if they are equipped with hi-speed internet with computer and related accessories. Some free websites are available in internet to serve this purpose. E-learning software may be used for this purpose. Another popular educational service of UISCs is supplying public examination results to candidates from websites which is a new dimension in our education system. Moreover, to ensure supply of text book content to the learners all text books are being made accessible and downloadable from National Curriculum and Textbook Board website (www.nctb.gov.bd). So, students can collect them easily from UISCs all over the country. To enhance government information services to the people at union level different institutions have started publishing their own web portals and have been instructed to upload updated information regularly. The government has already designed and published a unique web portal www.infocosh.bangladesh.gov.bd which contains web-link of government offices and organisations, which have provided information about its services and citizen charter. Almost every sector will be covered in this huge site gradually to help people get important information on their door-steps. Some web portals have been published in both Bangla and English. Some web portals have been published only in Bangla so that common people can understand its content easily. For instance, the web portals of 64 districts have been published only in Bangla language. Almost every government office has published its citizen charter on their web sites. So, people will just need to go to the UISCs and ask for the information. It is already recognised that ICT will greatly enhance the transparency, accountability and efficiency of law enforcement by providing information useful for common people on websites, supplying vital data at the fingertips of the law enforcers. Internet-based electronic filing of general diary (GD) and first incident report (FIR) will improve and speed-up the service. Trained workers at UISCs can help people use the internet to upload GDs, FIRs and complaints using the National ID No. as their user ID for future reference. This can ease hassle and put legal services at the citizens' doorsteps especially for women, hard-core poor, disabled, and other marginalised groups who are not otherwise able to access these services. Getting access to cause list and case updates publishedto be published on the internet will increase transparency of the judiciary and reduce citizens' hassle. Now, all laws are available online at www.bdlaws.gov.bd which public can easily read or get printed from the UISCs. Land is the only major asset held by lower income groups, and 80 per cent of the country's lawsuits are linked to land disputes. Noticing the fact the present government has taken up a massive plan for electronic administration of land and water resources that will take several years to put into operation. According to the plan a digital land management system will be established through the creation of a digital archive of existing and new surveys of all 64 districts. The Deeds Registration System within the Law Ministry will be improved as well. When the system will be internet-based common people will get printed information about their land from the centres. They would not need to go to record offices and spend illegal money to collect their land related papers. Non agricultural entrepreneurship: This component will deal with one of the vital issues of Digital Bangladesh. This is using ICT to promote access to markets by the disadvantaged producers and SMEs. Fostering market access with necessary information and training will promote, support and enhance rural farm and non-farm enterprises locally and internationally. In this regard UISCs can help provide internet use for collecting information of all kinds very usefully. To boost up the tourism sector of Bangladesh it is essential and vital to campaign for wonderful tourism sites of our country. As part of the campaign, voting is underway to elect 'Cox's Bazar sea-beach' and 'the Sundarbans' among the seven natural wonders of the world. The UISCs can play a big role in helping local people open e-mail accounts and give vote for our tourism sites. Environment and natural calamity management: ICT can play a critical role in all four phases of disaster risk management cycle. Firstly, reliable and rapid communication for preparation and assessment, observation and positioning tools, especially when crucial on-the-ground infrastructure is damaged. Secondly, share information on location and risk specific mitigation options for informed decision-making. Thirdly, share instant knowledge and information on location specific climate change impact by sectors and analysing alternative options for preparation. And fourthly, ICT-based advisory services for well-organised coordination, evaluation of disaster and risk reduction activities, long-term sustainable planning and policy formulation. Wireless ICT-based information delivery centres such as UISCs across the country can play vital roles in all those four phases by providing digital content for disaster preparedness, mitigation, response and recovery and location-specific pre-disaster warnings using mobile phones and UISCs wireless network facilities. The UISCs have been good place of employment for young, talented and hardworking people. It can also help create more employment opportunities for educated, half-educated jobless people. Educated people can be helped by uploading their CVs on internet job sites and giving them information on skill building training, internship, language training opportunities etc. Half educated people may be given training on basic applications of computer such as composing, scanning, printing etc so that they can set up their own businesses to provide these services in the rural areas. E-mail is a very popular and reliable mode of communication in ICT. All offices of Civil Service Administration are being inspired and instructed to use E-mail service to communicate. Besides, ministry and divisional offices, DCs, UNOs have been trained and instructed to use their own e-mail addresses to communicate officially. So, the centres can help open e-mail addresses for interested people to make contact with offices and their relatives using UISCs internet service. This e-mail service can also help rural people send photographs, letters, and important documents to their relatives living abroad within seconds saving both money and time. Video conferencing with webcam: Doctors' access through video conferencing facility in UISCs can give telemedicine facilities to rural patients who cannot afford to go to hospital far away from their villages. Web-based helpline with doctors may also ensure better medical care for rural patients. The centres can also connect rural people with their relatives living abroad very easily and at a very low cost by using free internet live video chatting services like yahoo messenger, skype etc. This video conferencing facility can be used to arrange meetings with public representatives locally so that people can express their needs to them. This video conferencing can be a very useful tool to bridge the gap between common people and government high-ups living far away from them physically. The need of printing digital photographs can be served by UISCs very easily. By using the centre's resources people can get their photographs conveniently and at a very low cost. It may at least serve their urgent need. The present government places strong emphasis on revitalising local government institutions (LGI) at the rural level (around 4,500 Union Parishads) and at the sub-district level (Upazila Parishads). The LGIs have been re-designed accordingly to serve as local delivery points for information and e-services. This is the reflection of the government's commitment to get services to the doorsteps of the citizen. With the help of UISCs local government administration will be improved. Transparency and accountability will be ensured, people's voices will be channelled to policy making levels. The UISCs will greatly help in the collection of demographic information, birth, death and marriage registrations, school enrolment, vaccination, employment and other information using low-cost ICT access comprising internet, email, mobile phones etc. Presently, UISC and Upazila Information Centres offer low-cost ICT access (internet, mobile phones), digital content on education, health, human rights, agriculture, etc. and competence building programmes on diverse areas. Realisation of the large voter roll database, combined with the birth registration database, as platform for e-services delivery for a host of different services across the government such as VGFVGD cards, driving licences, passports, vaccination, school enrolment tracking, etc. In spite of having all these potentialities there are allegations that most of the centres are being kept inoperative, because of poor monitoring, shortage or absence of skilled manpower, lack of power supply, etc. So, the intended people are still deprived of the services of these centres and the government is falling short of its target of achieving digital Bangladesh within the year 2021. So, a set of skilled manpower needs to be created and posted at these centres. To ensure smooth power supply solar panel may be installed in remote areas, or any other source of electricity may be provided for smooth running of UISCs. To ensure keen monitoring of the centres District Information Offices can be given control over them with authority and logistics for regular inspection and support to the centres. District Information Offices also must be well-equipped with ICT knowledge, so that it can work together with UISCs to share and disseminate information all over the district. There are also problems related to getting updated information. If the information on the web sites is not up-to-date that information is useless, sometimes misleading and harmful. For instance, most of the web portals of Bangladesh Government and concerned offices, district web portals have backdated, misleading information. It seems that they have opened the websites just to have an address on the web as formality; they have no intention to provide interested people with the latest information about them. So, it must be ensured that web pages are updated with the latest and accurate information and data. This can be done easily, if individual organisations create a dedicated information desk that will not only provide hands on information, but also keep their website updated. It is a fact that Bangladesh has limited material resources, capacity and know-how. But through appropriate use of ICT tools Bangladesh can capitalise on the country's potential human resources. The present government is committed towards reaching the target of creating a knowledge-based and middle income country by 2021. With the help of ICT Policy 2009, Right to Information Act, Access to Information (A2I) Programme and ICT Act that offer congenial setting for citizens' information access and e-commerce, a network of upbeat agents in the ministries, districts and upazilas, a number of initiatives that demonstrate the true concept and benefits of Digital Bangladesh, a potential young workforce ready to be guided, the UISC can be vital tool for creating a 'Sonar Bangla' where the common citizen of the country live in prosperity and have equitable access to quality education, healthcare, law and justice. In short, to develop the service of UISC and promote its access among the village people we need more support and valuable comment about it from IT related organisations and individuals. The writer is District Information Officer, Chandpur, and can be reached at email: arifsadeq@yahoo.com
In the midst of myriad of problems the dream of a digital Bangladesh within the fiftieth anniversary of our independence in 2021 injected some life to the frustrated young generation of Bangladesh. Though the scope of digital Bangladesh is not clearly defined yet, it is assumed that almost every sector of our life will get the benefit of the advancement of information and communications technology (ICT) and that the government wants to make Bangladesh fully digitized by 2021 through application of third generation ICT which we can have easy access to within that period. So, it is assumed the government has set its goal and is chalking out plans for moving forward towards achieving welfare and service oriented digital Bangladesh. As per the paper "Digital Bangladesh for Good Governance" presented recently by Md Abdul Karim, Principal Secretary, Prime Minister's Office, "The current government's Digital Bangladesh by 2021 vision proposes to mainstream ICT as a pro-poor tool to eradicate poverty, establish good governance, ensure social equity through quality education, healthcare and law enforcement for all, and prepare the people for climate change." Setting up of Union Information and Service Centres (UISC) can be seen as the first concrete step to bring the fruits of ICT to the doorsteps of underprivileged rural people. The service offered in these centres targets the propositions of vision 2021 mentioned above. Let us see how these centres can utilise the potentials to accelerate the pace of overall development of the country. There are 4501 UISCs in the remote areas of Bangladesh. An UISC has two entrepreneurs who serve the IT related service to the village people. UISC is situated mostly near Union Council complexes and village people come to the centre to services without any cost or with a nominal fee. The services include Internet Browsing: Village people are helped to browse websites which contain useful information for them. The service is provided at a nominal cost. Recently, two national online information encyclopedia www.infokosh. bangladesh.gov.bd and www.infocom.gov.bd have been published. From these websites entrepreneurs of UISCs provide vital information on the following sectors to the village people for taking conscious and right decisions. The sectors include Agriculture: With a view to attain self-sufficiency in food production by 2013, this sector naturally gets the highest emphasis in the Digital Bangladesh e-services strategy. Agriculture related web links may provide farmers with real time information related to integrated crop management, input availability and dosages, irrigation, soil quality, etc. at the community level. This will also help build capacity of farmers and extension workers through distant learning and by using locally relevant multimedia content, promoting market access with necessary information, organisinguniting farmers nationally to enable exchange of knowledge, information on health and education. Proper utilisation of the centres can strengthen the tele-medicine network (now available only in towns in the private sector at a high cost), and can help launch union-based mobile health units with prescription from doctors and ICT connectivity with specialised centres at district and divisional levels. ICT-based healthcare service delivery and capacity building of tens of thousands of semi-skilled health workers around the country can significantly reduce infant and maternal mortality, to the 2021 target levels of 1.5 per cent for both. ICT have been recognised as a useful mode to disseminate quality education throughout the country. Attractive e-learning environments in schools and distant learning through internet may increase the number of students. ICT-based education customised to the need and ability of the stake-holders (local students, job seekers, potential entrepreneurs, etc) providedto be provided in UISCs can help a lot for human resource development at the grass-roots level. The centres can be cheap source of e-book on child and mass-education that can be used by local institutions to provide child and mass-education in an effective manner. Students living in villages may be trained in UISCs to browse internet to search learning materials and useful articles with up-to-date information, the task that is being done by the cyber-cafes mostly situated in urban areas. The centres can also help in learning Communicative English online, if they are equipped with hi-speed internet with computer and related accessories. Some free websites are available in internet to serve this purpose. E-learning software may be used for this purpose. Another popular educational service of UISCs is supplying public examination results to candidates from websites which is a new dimension in our education system. Moreover, to ensure supply of text book content to the learners all text books are being made accessible and downloadable from National Curriculum and Textbook Board website (www.nctb.gov.bd). So, students can collect them easily from UISCs all over the country. To enhance government information services to the people at union level different institutions have started publishing their own web portals and have been instructed to upload updated information regularly. The government has already designed and published a unique web portal www.infocosh.bangladesh.gov.bd which contains web-link of government offices and organisations, which have provided information about its services and citizen charter. Almost every sector will be covered in this huge site gradually to help people get important information on their door-steps. Some web portals have been published in both Bangla and English. Some web portals have been published only in Bangla so that common people can understand its content easily. For instance, the web portals of 64 districts have been published only in Bangla language. Almost every government office has published its citizen charter on their web sites. So, people will just need to go to the UISCs and ask for the information. It is already recognised that ICT will greatly enhance the transparency, accountability and efficiency of law enforcement by providing information useful for common people on websites, supplying vital data at the fingertips of the law enforcers. Internet-based electronic filing of general diary (GD) and first incident report (FIR) will improve and speed-up the service. Trained workers at UISCs can help people use the internet to upload GDs, FIRs and complaints using the National ID No. as their user ID for future reference. This can ease hassle and put legal services at the citizens' doorsteps especially for women, hard-core poor, disabled, and other marginalised groups who are not otherwise able to access these services. Getting access to cause list and case updates publishedto be published on the internet will increase transparency of the judiciary and reduce citizens' hassle. Now, all laws are available online at www.bdlaws.gov.bd which public can easily read or get printed from the UISCs. Land is the only major asset held by lower income groups, and 80 per cent of the country's lawsuits are linked to land disputes. Noticing the fact the present government has taken up a massive plan for electronic administration of land and water resources that will take several years to put into operation. According to the plan a digital land management system will be established through the creation of a digital archive of existing and new surveys of all 64 districts. The Deeds Registration System within the Law Ministry will be improved as well. When the system will be internet-based common people will get printed information about their land from the centres. They would not need to go to record offices and spend illegal money to collect their land related papers. Non agricultural entrepreneurship: This component will deal with one of the vital issues of Digital Bangladesh. This is using ICT to promote access to markets by the disadvantaged producers and SMEs. Fostering market access with necessary information and training will promote, support and enhance rural farm and non-farm enterprises locally and internationally. In this regard UISCs can help provide internet use for collecting information of all kinds very usefully. To boost up the tourism sector of Bangladesh it is essential and vital to campaign for wonderful tourism sites of our country. As part of the campaign, voting is underway to elect 'Cox's Bazar sea-beach' and 'the Sundarbans' among the seven natural wonders of the world. The UISCs can play a big role in helping local people open e-mail accounts and give vote for our tourism sites. Environment and natural calamity management: ICT can play a critical role in all four phases of disaster risk management cycle. Firstly, reliable and rapid communication for preparation and assessment, observation and positioning tools, especially when crucial on-the-ground infrastructure is damaged. Secondly, share information on location and risk specific mitigation options for informed decision-making. Thirdly, share instant knowledge and information on location specific climate change impact by sectors and analysing alternative options for preparation. And fourthly, ICT-based advisory services for well-organised coordination, evaluation of disaster and risk reduction activities, long-term sustainable planning and policy formulation. Wireless ICT-based information delivery centres such as UISCs across the country can play vital roles in all those four phases by providing digital content for disaster preparedness, mitigation, response and recovery and location-specific pre-disaster warnings using mobile phones and UISCs wireless network facilities. The UISCs have been good place of employment for young, talented and hardworking people. It can also help create more employment opportunities for educated, half-educated jobless people. Educated people can be helped by uploading their CVs on internet job sites and giving them information on skill building training, internship, language training opportunities etc. Half educated people may be given training on basic applications of computer such as composing, scanning, printing etc so that they can set up their own businesses to provide these services in the rural areas. E-mail is a very popular and reliable mode of communication in ICT. All offices of Civil Service Administration are being inspired and instructed to use E-mail service to communicate. Besides, ministry and divisional offices, DCs, UNOs have been trained and instructed to use their own e-mail addresses to communicate officially. So, the centres can help open e-mail addresses for interested people to make contact with offices and their relatives using UISCs internet service. This e-mail service can also help rural people send photographs, letters, and important documents to their relatives living abroad within seconds saving both money and time. Video conferencing with webcam: Doctors' access through video conferencing facility in UISCs can give telemedicine facilities to rural patients who cannot afford to go to hospital far away from their villages. Web-based helpline with doctors may also ensure better medical care for rural patients. The centres can also connect rural people with their relatives living abroad very easily and at a very low cost by using free internet live video chatting services like yahoo messenger, skype etc. This video conferencing facility can be used to arrange meetings with public representatives locally so that people can express their needs to them. This video conferencing can be a very useful tool to bridge the gap between common people and government high-ups living far away from them physically. The need of printing digital photographs can be served by UISCs very easily. By using the centre's resources people can get their photographs conveniently and at a very low cost. It may at least serve their urgent need. The present government places strong emphasis on revitalising local government institutions (LGI) at the rural level (around 4,500 Union Parishads) and at the sub-district level (Upazila Parishads). The LGIs have been re-designed accordingly to serve as local delivery points for information and e-services. This is the reflection of the government's commitment to get services to the doorsteps of the citizen. With the help of UISCs local government administration will be improved. Transparency and accountability will be ensured, people's voices will be channelled to policy making levels. The UISCs will greatly help in the collection of demographic information, birth, death and marriage registrations, school enrolment, vaccination, employment and other information using low-cost ICT access comprising internet, email, mobile phones etc. Presently, UISC and Upazila Information Centres offer low-cost ICT access (internet, mobile phones), digital content on education, health, human rights, agriculture, etc. and competence building programmes on diverse areas. Realisation of the large voter roll database, combined with the birth registration database, as platform for e-services delivery for a host of different services across the government such as VGFVGD cards, driving licences, passports, vaccination, school enrolment tracking, etc. In spite of having all these potentialities there are allegations that most of the centres are being kept inoperative, because of poor monitoring, shortage or absence of skilled manpower, lack of power supply, etc. So, the intended people are still deprived of the services of these centres and the government is falling short of its target of achieving digital Bangladesh within the year 2021. So, a set of skilled manpower needs to be created and posted at these centres. To ensure smooth power supply solar panel may be installed in remote areas, or any other source of electricity may be provided for smooth running of UISCs. To ensure keen monitoring of the centres District Information Offices can be given control over them with authority and logistics for regular inspection and support to the centres. District Information Offices also must be well-equipped with ICT knowledge, so that it can work together with UISCs to share and disseminate information all over the district. There are also problems related to getting updated information. If the information on the web sites is not up-to-date that information is useless, sometimes misleading and harmful. For instance, most of the web portals of Bangladesh Government and concerned offices, district web portals have backdated, misleading information. It seems that they have opened the websites just to have an address on the web as formality; they have no intention to provide interested people with the latest information about them. So, it must be ensured that web pages are updated with the latest and accurate information and data. This can be done easily, if individual organisations create a dedicated information desk that will not only provide hands on information, but also keep their website updated. It is a fact that Bangladesh has limited material resources, capacity and know-how. But through appropriate use of ICT tools Bangladesh can capitalise on the country's potential human resources. The present government is committed towards reaching the target of creating a knowledge-based and middle income country by 2021. With the help of ICT Policy 2009, Right to Information Act, Access to Information (A2I) Programme and ICT Act that offer congenial setting for citizens' information access and e-commerce, a network of upbeat agents in the ministries, districts and upazilas, a number of initiatives that demonstrate the true concept and benefits of Digital Bangladesh, a potential young workforce ready to be guided, the UISC can be vital tool for creating a 'Sonar Bangla' where the common citizen of the country live in prosperity and have equitable access to quality education, healthcare, law and justice. In short, to develop the service of UISC and promote its access among the village people we need more support and valuable comment about it from IT related organisations and individuals. The writer is District Information Officer, Chandpur, and can be reached at email: arifsadeq@yahoo.com