Road Map on Development of ICT Sector of Bangladesh - 2016

The principal activities comprise of six clusters: industry, infrastructure, e-governance, human resources development, laboratories and services. The roadmap was announced by State Minister for ICT Division Zunaid Ahmed Palak last Tuesday on an event to mark two years of the division's activities.

Under the roadmap for industry, targets such as 1,000 innovation, raising software export earnings to $5 billion by 2021, developing eco-system for the gaming industry etc. have been included. Additionally, academies will be set up for innovation and entrepreneurship. These have been sent to the Finance Ministry already for DPP.

For infrastructure, Palak said that the government has already taken fiber optic up to Upazila levels. The target now is to take it to all unions between 2016 and 2018. 554 Business Processing Outsourcing (BPO) centers will be set up from division to upazila levels. 2016 will see the construction of world's fifth largest data center start. Full digitization of the judiciary will be achieved by 2018. The government has identified 100 aspects of the judiciary where ICT can be harnessed and assist in the resolution of 3 million cases currently in backlog.

As regards e-governance, ICT Division's another initiative is to reduce the use of paper via the use of ERP. Local software companies are being engaged in this regard by the use of open source platform. To develop human resources, the ICT Division is going to set up seven incubator and training institutes outside Dhaka. The curricula have been finalized and sent to Planning Ministry for approval.

There is another initiative named 'Digital Bus'. Six modern training labs would be set up in buses which will play nationwide imparting ICT knowledge. Mobile phone operator Robi and Huawei Bangladesh will jointly implement this project. Lessons of online tutorials from Khan Academy are being translated into Bangla. Agami Foundation is working to make these contents more localized. Once done, students in Bangladesh will be able to avail themselves of the content of Khan Academy in Bangla. The ICT Division is also going to establish a Digital Forensic Lab and Software Quality Assurance Lab.

3,000 computer cum language labs would be set up across the country. These labs would be set up in 970,000 educational institutions around Bangladesh. In phases, this number would be increased to cover all educational institutions.

As for services, the government has already started the project Info-Lady. Under this project, rural women would be able to learn basic ICT from ladies who would go door-to-door imparting training through handheld devices. A national helpline would be started, through which citizens can seek all kinds of assistance. Through the implementation of the e-shop project, the adverse impacts of middle men on producers would be reduced, and farmers would be able to get fair prices for their produce.