Another digital vision with many still unconnected

The government is gearing up to implement a new "Smart Bangladesh" vision by 2041 with the belief that a preceding "Digital Bangladesh" had been realised by 2021.

However, its own research tells that a huge number of the population still do not use mobiles, let alone the internet, and digital services are failing to reach people for inadequacies in the digital infrastructure.

A "Smart Bangladesh Taskforce" was recently formed aimed at rolling out advanced information technology in the country, especially to transform the education, health, agriculture and financial sectors.

The taskforce will formulate short, medium and long-term plans to establish "Smart Bangladesh". It will also provide direction in the formulation of regulations on information technology in the economic, social, commercial and scientific spheres.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is the chairperson of the taskforce, while the secretary to the ICT division will act as the member secretary.

"We, the ICT division, proposed for establishing the Smart Bangladesh Taskforce as the tenure of the Digital Bangladesh taskforce ended in 2021," said NM Zeaul Alam, senior secretary to the ICT Division.

"Now we are formulating a master plan for Smart Bangladesh," he said.

He said the core vision was to develop inclusive ICT services and a knowledge and innovation-based society.

"This will eradicate the gap among academia, industry and the government."

In a gazette notification published on Saturday, the government said the taskforce would provide necessary instructions on launching "Bangabandhu Satellite 2".

It will also provide necessary guidance on the implementation of a blended education master plan and connecting the country with a 4th submarine cable if the bandwidth demand was there after the launch of 5G services.

The 30-member committee will also provide direction in setting time-bound targets for the formulation and implementation of a "Made in Bangladesh" policy to achieve desired export targets and provide necessary instruction for the digitalisation of the financial sector.

The government believes it has already achieved the goals of "Digital Bangladesh", which was declared in its December 2008 election manifesto.

Since then, Bangladesh has made impressive strides in digitalisation with the establishment of "Union Digital Centres" to ensure online government, commerce and banking services and enabling internet connections for villages.

However, the new population census depicts a grim scenario when it comes to digital inclusion in the country with nearly half of the population not owning a mobile phone and 70 per cent not using the internet.

About three crore people of Bangladesh, aged 18 or above, do not own a mobile phone while 6.5 crore of them do not use the internet, according to the census, highlighting the unaffordability of devices and digital inclusion remaining elusive for many.

On the other hand, a recent government evaluation found that people were not getting the maximum benefit from the 761 services the state digitalised, primarily for slow servers and poor internet speeds.

A number of those services can no longer be requested online, according to the evaluation of the Central Procurement Technical Unit (CPTU) on 67 select digital services of 26 ministries and divisions.

AKM Fahim Mashroor, chief executive officer of bdjobs.com and AjkerDeal, said there was a strong political commitment at the policy level for developing a "Digital Bangladesh".

But there was no proper preparation and skills at the implementation level. Therefore, people have not got the proper benefits from the vision, he said.

"The same thing could happen to the Smart Bangladesh vision," said Mashroor, a former president of the Bangladesh Association of Software and Information Services (BASIS), the country's top ICT trade body.

"If the mentality of the people at the implementation levels does not change and they do not become smart, it will also fail in many aspects."

However, Syed Almas Kabir, the immediate past president of the BASIS, believes the country has achieved the goals of "Digital Bangladesh".

"This was proved during the pandemic when we ran daily life smoothly with the help of technology and this was possible only because of Digital Bangladesh," he said.

He thinks that the undertaking of "Smart Bangladesh" vision was timely.

"Now we have to make the government systems smart using the infrastructure of Digital Bangladesh. There will be the use of artificial technology and blockchain-based services," he said.