2016WITSA Global ICT Excellence Awards

Nomination Form

AWARD CATEGORIES:

Awards will be given to individuals, academics, businesses, NGOs, government branches etc., on the basis of particular programs, web sites, strategies of ICT / Internet deployment; i.e. the awards will not be political but technical, honoring use and implementation of technology in accordance with the criteria described below (i.e. a government per se will not be a “winner”, but one of its integrated web sites or services may be). The winners may not necessarily represent the most advanced technology solutions, but should be excellent examples of ICT deployment which have made a difference for the community of interest (whether providing public services, boosting profits or advancing connectivity):

Please note that nominees will be judged on the basis of the following criteria and weighting:

Judging Criteria / Weighting
Global Impact/Potential / 40%
Market Potential / 20%
Innovative Features and Functionalities / 20%
Feasibility of Implementation / 20%

4. SUSTAINABLE GROWTH AWARD

Individuals, academic institutions, corporations, NGOs or government authorities that have made a remarkable and successful effort at using ICTs as a tool to promote sustainable economic growth. Sustainable economic growth shall be defined as the ability to improve our financial and social wellbeing without compromising the prosperity or wellbeing of future generations; a sustainable economy is therefore one in which economic growth is decoupled from environmental impacts. The three key challenges are climate change, resource degradation and pollution. At the heart of all three is energy efficiency and the role that ICTs may have.

YOUR NOMINEE(S):

We are pleased to nominate 2 (two) Nominees in SUSTAINABLE GROWTH AWARD Category- (A) ICT Division, Government of the People's Republic of Bangladesh and (B) ATI Limited, a private software development company.

(A)Nominee 1 (under SUSTAINABLE GROWTH AWARD Category)

ICT DIVISION

Government of the People's Republic of Bangladesh

ICT Tower, E-14/X, Agargaon, Dhaka-1207, Bangladesh

Phone: +88-02-8181641

Fax: +88-02-8181565

e-mail: ,

Website:

REASONS FOR NOMINATION (please justify why you think your candidate is qualified):

Creating a progressive and dynamic Digital Bangladesh and drive the country towards its goal is only possible if its Govt. lays the ground for its ICT stakeholders to work in full potential. ICT DIVISION under the Government of the People's Republic of Bangladesh is such a Division which has been working to facilitate the policies, make friendly strategies and above all arranging fund for the activities to carry forward. ICT Division has been implementing Leveraging ICT (LICT) project for this goal. ICT Division has brought 55 major offices of each of the districts and 487 Upazilas (30 major offices from each) under connectivity. A total of 18,000+ government offices are now connected. A Disaster Recovery Site in Jessore (300km from Data Center), Secretariat WiFi Connectivity (connecting 5000+ top level government servants) and 25000+ customized tabs have been distributed among government officials to remain connected to the network and provide seamless services to the citizens

About Leveraging ICT (LICT) for Good Governance under ICT Division

Digital Bangladesh: Vision 2021is the aspiration of Bangladesh Government to leverage on ICT at every aspect of Development and become a modern middle-income country by 2021. The ICT Division, the branch of the Government leading this initiative by leveraging ICT, has taken various initiatives to make this Vision a success. This year Bangladesh achieved a milestone when it was classified as a lower middle-income country by the World Bank. This means that Bangladesh is on the right track in Development in reaching its goal of becoming a middle-income country by 2021. The ICT Division is making its contribution by leveraging ICT to improve both the public sector and private sector. The Leveraging ICT for Good Governance is an initiative of the ICT Division to make public service more inclusive, efficient, transparent and accountable. The ICT Division has connected all Government offices upto the Upazila tier level with high speed connectivity and has developed the National e- Architecture, an overall architecture for applications to be deployed across this network. The design is similar to deployment of Government Networks in other nations, but what is different and innovative about this deployment is the innovation in service delivery that is changing the public service culture of a nation.

  1. Inclusive, Transparentand Accountable Public Service Delivery through an efficient communication network across all of Government.
  2. Developing a platform to standardize all Government Applications for interoperability and providing a medium to share data across all Government services – National e-Architecture (NEA)
  3. Innovative services with a broad Development Agenda under the NEA -
  4. An application to disburse pension to Primary teachers, ensuring that the retired teachers get their pension on time and without having to travel to a Government office and in some cases becoming victim to transaction costs
  5. Validation for rice farmers when purchasing seed and paddy, thus ensuring the right people are being allocated the resources and eliminating the hassles of the middlemen
  6. National id verification - used in this case to verify the identity of 1.4 million Government officers for national pay fixation under the new pay scale.
  7. Development of a mobile App – Alapon, for communication among Government Officers. This is an innovation because it not only let’s Government Officers communicate through voice and video, but also allows them to view and approve documents over a secure network.

Program Overview

Bangladesh Computer Council under the ICT Division houses multiple initiatives such as establishment of National Data Center, ensuring last mile connectivity to the furthest government offices, establishing National Enterprise Architecture (NEA), establish cyber security by forming Computer Incidence Response Team and providing Innovative Public Services. The purpose is to put the citizens first and provide smooth and swift Government services to the people, which will in turn boost productivity. Good Governance is key to eliminating Poverty and to realize the dream of “Digital Bangladesh”.

While the initiatives of Leveraging ICT for Good Governance of Bangladesh Computer Council under the ICT Division may seem to be rather basic for the developed World but what sets the program apart is the situation of infrastructure and resource under which the initiatives are being implemented, and the unique innovations in service delivery as a result. Bangladesh is a third world developing country where even basic power and internet facilities were hard to get. Bangladesh being a country with a population of about 160 million and being served by just over One million civil servants; providing service at fingertips is easier said than done. Even in 2009, Bangladesh was a country with very basic infrastructure, frequent power outage was common with just about one million internet users.

On, 12th December 2008, the government declared “Digital Bangladesh: Vision 2021” as a master plan to use ICT and bring revolution in both Government and Private Sector and transform Bangladesh into Middle-Income Country by 2021. Now, sitting in 2016, the journey looks rather glorious; Power development has experienced over 400% growth and now there are about 63.3 million internet users. Bangladesh stands tall with strong Digital Governance in place. In fact, many of the countries across the region now looks up to Bangladesh’s e-Governance foundations as a benchmark to follow.

Digital Government upto root level

In order to automate the processes up to the very root level government office, centralization of all the information was necessary and at the same time the access network up to the root level is also necessary. Hence to implement this activity, two major projects have been taken up namelyBangla GovNet Project & Info-Sarker 2 Project. Under Bangla GovNet Project, National Data Center has been established. The capacity of the Data Center has been upgraded as per requirement and now stands at 2 petabytes. The data center provides the necessary virtualization and cloud services. Now, in order to ensure connectivity at the remote level, Bangla GovNet Project executed fiber connectivity roll-out to 7 divisions, 64 districts (DC Offices) and 30 Upazilas (one office in each each upazila). This project was a grand success in terms of establishing the primary hold. Now, Bangladesh has connectivity across all the districts, however it was still far from sufficient with only about 5% of the actual coverage. Hence, Info-Sarker 2 Project was launched. Under Info-Sarker 2 Project, 55 major offices of each of the districts and 487 Upazilas (30 major offices from each) were brought under connectivity. A total of 18,000+ government offices are now connected where information sharing is happening via the national Data Center. To ensure data security, a Disaster Recovery Site has also been established at Jessore (300km from Data Center). Under the same project, the Dhaka Secretariat has been completely brought under WiFi Connectivity - connecting 5000+ top level government servants. Moreover, 25000+ customized tabs have been distributed among government officials to remain connected to the network and provide seamless service to the citizens.

Soon, Info-Sarker 3 Project kicks off to ensure 100% coverage of all the Government offices upto Union Level.

Global Impact

Leveraging ICT for Good Governance has multiple direct and indirect impacts globally. According to Boston Consulting Group, KPMG, The World Bank, ADB, ATKearney and various Global reports, Bangladesh now stands tall as a rising economy. The proliferation of ICT has helped Bangladesh become a service location of preference for the Developed World. Bangladesh and its people are now resources that everyone wants to harness. Hence, the success of the program has contributed to global productivity by allowing inputs in the global knowledge market.

The progress in e-governance foundations of Bangladesh now serves as a learning platform for Developing Nations. The inclusive and transparent public service delivery will ensure that no citizen is discriminated against and will hence play a vital role in economic growth and poverty alleviation, which in turn has major implications in terms of Human Development as well as Global Sustainability and Security.

The innovative services developed under the NEA platform are a great learning experience that will benefit Developing Nations and will contribute to the Knowledge Economy of the World.

Market Potential

There are a large number of services that are dependent on multiple departments sharing information. Hence interoperability is crucial and the NEA platform becomes an essential medium for service delivery. There are potentially hundreds of service applications that will be developed on this platform – resulting in more jobs for software development companies. The high speed connectivity down to the root level (3g and fibre optic) will ensure that these services are available to citizens even in the remotest region. The existence of Union Digital Centers will ensure that the service delivery is inclusive – meaning that a third party can act as a service delivery point in cases where the citizens are not able to receive the services themselves.

Standardization & Information Security:

With the advent of National Data Center and root level connectivity, common framework, interoperability and smooth data exchange became very important; hence a National Enterprise Architecture has been developed. Along with this architecture, all the government offices got connected via common middleware platform namely the National e-Service Busfor smooth information and data exchange. Now, all the government agencies are connected by common standard guideline and framework and hence seamless interoperability.

As the overall “Digital Governance” got bigger in magnitude by the day, more and more information got assimilated into the system with increasing usage and target groups. Hence, ensuring cyber security became imminent. As a result, a strong Computer Incidence Response Team(CIRT) has been developed to protect from the cyber security threat. The CIRT team focuses on the National Data Center for monitoring and analysis of the threat trend, finding & repairing vulnerability points and providing warning to the hosted services in Data Center. The CIRT Team also performs cyber security awareness programs and support to develop local expertise at other government agencies.

Innovative Features and Functionalities:

All the initiatives under Leveraging ICT for Good Governance Program have resulted into strong e-governance framework and the benefit of this must reach out to the citizens. So, many innovative services are being designed providing citizen service at fingertips. Some of the services are as follows:

  • The National id verification can be used by any Government application through an API. This will reduce the time and cost in providing service delivery at many different levels and will ensure security as well as help provide service to the right person.
  • Three services are currently being provided:
  • Farmer’s Helpline: Farmers can directly sell their harvest to local storage depots through NID verification by attaining quality verification certificate from officer in charge. It is a hassle free centralized system that will ensure fair pay.
  • Teacher’s Assistance: Primary Schoolteachers can get their pension approval and disbursement easily from the online system.
  • Direct SIM Registration by NID verification: Any citizen will be able to register their SIM cards from local government offices.
  • Many more upcoming services like electricity e-bill payment and direct rice procurement from millers via NID verification are also in process.
  • With the development of a strong network backbone, a 800+ node video conferencing system has been put to place. Now, all the major offices can do web conferencing and get connected instantly reducing gap between the tiers of management at government level hence increasing the speed of decision-making.
  • Customized mobile application Alapon, ensures that Government Officers can be reached anytime and also approve e-files through their mobile phones. This will help eliminate the weeks of waiting to move a file in the Government offices when the desk officer is traveling, as the App will allow the officer to view the documents and provide the necessary approvals. This also means that the location of the file and the time taken to approve it is transparent and will ensure better service delivery by helping to eliminate any discrepancy or harassment to the citizens. It is an inexpensive and secured communication solution connecting all the government employees and taking us one step closer to the vision of paperless government office.

Recommendations:

Leveraging ICT for Good Governance under ICT Division, Government of Bangladesh, has successfully put tremendous effort in using ICT as a tool to promote sustainable economic growth of the country. The program is dedicated to implement ‘Digital Bangladesh’that ultimately improving financial and social wellbeing without compromising the prosperity and wellbeing of future generations leading Bangladesh towards a sustainable economy. LICT, being an absolute ICT program, is automatically fall to the category of green technology that helps decoupling from environmental impactschallenging climate change, resource degradation and pollution. Thus, we strongly recommend LICT as one of our nominees for WITSA SUSTAINABLE GROWTHAWARD 2016.

SUPPORTING INFORMATION: Please send any supporting information to the address above, including information from candidate (i.e. excerpt from program description, web site print-out, press release, etc.)

Nominations from Bangladesh Computer Samity (BCS) Page 1/7