Bangladesh ICT Roadmap (Draft)_200809

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National ICT Roadmap/Action Plan

PREPARED FOR

Ministry of Science and ICT

People’s Republic of Bangladesh

Support for Development of Public Sector use of ICT under EMTAP Project Bangladesh Computer Council (BCC)

Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh

S2-ICT

Bangladesh ICT Roadmap (Draft)

Version 1.1 (17 September 2008)

PROJECT CONSULTANTS

Please address enquiries about this document to: [email protected]

[email protected]

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CONTENTS 1. Executive summary....................................................... 3 2. Introduction ................................................................. 10

Purpose of this document................................................................................10 Who should read it ..........................................................................................10 Context............................................................................................................10

3. Methodology................................................................ 11 4. Current state analysis ................................................. 12 5. Structure of the roadmap ............................................ 23 6. Prioritisation framework .............................................. 25

Mapping of existing initiatives..........................................................................25 Synthesis into policy clusters...........................................................................26

7. Prioritisation results..................................................... 31 Strategic fit ......................................................................................................31 Impact .............................................................................................................32 Feasibility ........................................................................................................32

8. Recommended thrust areas for Bangladesh .............. 35 Mission Critical Programmes...........................................................................35 Priorities for phasing the delivery of the Mission Critical Programmes ............36 Delivery priorities: Leadership and Coordination .............................................38 Delivery priorities: Empowering Citizens .........................................................41 Delivery priorities: Transforming Public Services ............................................43 Delivery priorities: Growing the ICT Sector .....................................................44 Delivery priorities: Enabling the Market ...........................................................44

9. The National ICT Roadmap for Bangladesh ............... 46

Appendix 1:

Mission Critical Programme Roadmap Delivery Plans …………… 50

Appendix 2:

Benchmarking the ICT Roadmap………………… ………………… 75

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1. Executive summary The report presents recommendations to the Government of Bangladesh on the National ICT Roadmap for Bangladesh, an overview of which is set out in Figure 1.1 below. Figure 1.1: Recommended workstreams for the ICT Roadmap Figure 1.2 below shows how the five key workstreams in the roadmap are then broken down into 14 Mission Critical Programmes, setting out the objective proposed for each one and a summary of how the ICT Roadmap will deliver that objective. Figure 1.1: Recommended workstreams for the ICT Roadmap

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Citizens SMEs

Civil Servants

Users

AccessI have easy and affordable

access to ICT

MotivationI see real benefits from ICT which are directly

relevant to my life

Transforming Public Services

E-democracy

E-citizens

E-business

E-Finance

E-SME

E-Agriculture

E-education

E-health

E-disaster and climate change

E-culture

1 Empowering citizens

5Leadership and Governance

3 Growing the ICT sector

Hardware

Software

Applications

Digital contentConfidence

I have all the skills I need to use ICT, and I

feel trust and security using it

4 Enabling the market

Fiscal framework

Regulatory framework

Legal framework

Telecoms

This is then followed, at Figure 1.2, by a summary of timelines and major milestones for each Mission Critical Programme, as they progress through the three strategic phases of the ICT Roadmap over a five year period:

Phase 1: Building momentum Phase 2: Achieving critical mass Phase 3: Transformation.

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Figure 1.2: overview of recommended workstreams within the ICT Roadmap Work Stream 1: Empowering Citizens

1.1 Universal Community Based Access to ICT Objective: To ensure that by 2013, all Bangladeshi citizens and SMEs have access within their community to ICT and the skills to use them. How the ICT Roadmap will deliver this: By building a national partnership to establish an inclusive system of information and knowledge for all citizens through telecenters and other forms of public access, with special emphasis on marginalized groups and disability, which will be delivered using a rich combination of different business models, including

- Entrepreneur / Value adding sector - Voluntary sector - Schools computer labs opened up to the community out of school hours - Government infrastructure ( e.g., many post offices having been enhanced as e-

post/Cyber Post/e-service hub for government/public service (e.g. direct foreign remittance, money transfer, bill payment), local government institutions have big establishments, public libraries are underutilized)

- Through creation of information access through mobile telephone and community radio. 1.2 e-Bangla Objective: To ensure that Bangladeshis are easily able to produce and upload digital content in Bangla and that they are motivated and empowered to do so. How the ICT Roadmap will deliver this: Through delivery of a new National Strategy for e-Bangla, which will ensure in particular that:

− All government web content is available in Bangla − A wide range of cultural and educational content are digitised − Local communities are producing rich, interactive, localised and relevant Bangla content − Content is available through various channels, including mobile phone and community

radio 1.3 ICT in Education Objective: To ensure that, by 2013, all Bangladeshi secondary school children have access to ICT – not only for the development of basic ICT skills, but also to use ICTs for e-Learning How the ICT Roadmap will deliver this: By 2013, all secondary and higher secondary educational institutions will have an ICT Lab with access to all the curriculum materials, teacher training and support needed to ensure that:

− All children are confident users of ICT and internet − All teachers are able to use ICT for teaching

Work Stream 2: Transforming Public Services

2.1 Citizen-centric eServices Objective: By 2013, Bangladesh is one of the regional leaders for e-service maturity, and for the citizen focus of those e-services, as measured by UN benchmarks. High levels of citizen take-up for those services (through a rich mix of channels – including mobile phones, web, kiosks and service centres) will contribute to economic development, poverty reduction, and better and

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more transparent governance. How the ICT Roadmap will deliver this: By assisting every Ministry to develop and deliver plans for e-service investments, which:

− Prioritise low-technology, low-risk improvements that maximize citizen benefit through process redesign and by joining up services at the front-end

− Set targets for citizen take-up of the service, underpinned by clear plans for encouraging take-up

− Include plans for integration with government-wide service delivery channels and compliance with government-wide standards

− Plan for back-end automation of the full transaction over the longer term − Give special emphasis on agriculture, needs of SMEs, disaster management and

climate change, and health care. 2.2 Development of a citizen-centric, multi-channel service delivery system for the

Government of Bangladesh Objective: To deliver a citizen-centric, multi channel one stop shop for government that will ensure that the services prioritized for e-enablement are delivered in a way that is designed around user needs and achieve high levels of uptake and user satisfaction How the ICT Roadmap will deliver this: Through phased introduction of a multi-channel service delivery system that:

Presents the information and services that citizens want in a way that is easy to understand and designed for them

Responds to the majority of citizen needs directly rather than requiring them to go to channels managed by individual Ministries or agencies

Operates in an integrated way across multiple channels, leveraging in particular: Bangladesh’s high level of mobile phone penetration The national network of telecentres being developed in Workstream 2.1

Achieves high levels of customer satisfaction and high levels of uptake Avoids duplication of ICT expenditure by Ministries.

2.3 eGovernment Standards and Policies Objective: To develop a comprehensive eGovernment Interoperability Framework for the Government of Bangladesh, which has been fully adopted by all central and local government organisations and their ICT suppliers, ensuring that e-services can be integrated efficiently and effectively around citizen needs and that there is no waste or duplication in the Government’s ICT investments. How the ICT Roadmap will deliver this: Through progressive development of an eGovernment Interoperability Framework based on extensive industry consultation and open, internationally recognized standards. Work Stream 3: Growing the ICT Sector

3.1: International ICT trade and investment Campaign Objective: To develop a globally-recognised brand for Bangladesh as a centre for ICT investment, outsourcing and exports, which helps the Bangladesh ICT sector to grow its levels of exports, turnover and Foreign Direct Investment by at least 50% each year between now and 2013. How the ICT Roadmap will deliver this: Through a strong national brand and a highly effective international communications campaign developed and delivered in partnership between the GoB and the ICT industry.

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3.2. Access to finance for the ICT Sector . Objective: To ensure that the growth of the ICT sector in Bangladesh is not constrained by lack of access to debt and equity financing. How the ICT Roadmap will deliver this: By:

refocusing the Equity Entrepreneurship Fund as a vibrant and effective source of VC funding for ICT businesses

addressing market barriers to the effective provision of debt financing to the ICT sector extending the corporate tax holiday for software and ITES sector for at least the five years of

the ICT Roadmap 3.3: Meeting the Skill Needs of the ICT Sector Objective: To ensure that Bangladesh is seen as a global source of high level ICT skills and that the ICT sector has a ready supply of skills that meet its needs as the sector grows How the ICT Roadmap will deliver this: By establishing a close partnership and dialogue between the ICT sector and the Higher Education system to ensure that the supply of ICT skills is well matched to industry’s changing needs as ICT technologies and markets develop; and by addressing the resource and capacity constraints in the university sector needed to deliver this – including through linking all public and private universities to a national broadband research network. 3.4: ICT cluster development Objective: To develop clusters of high-growth ICT companies based around Technology Parks in each division of Bangladesh by 2013 (or federal states, if they are so upgraded by that time) How the ICT Roadmap will deliver this: By using public private partnerships to establish at Technology Parks which have close links with nearby Higher Education institutions, and are well-served by high-speed broadband and wireless connectivity. ICT firms locating to the parks will benefit from preferential focus in broader support schemes for the ICT sector, such as the Equity Entrepreneurship Fund. Work Stream 4: Enabling the Market

4.1: Removing Legal Barriers to e-Commerce Objective: To ensure that all remaining legal barriers to doing business electronically in Bangladesh are removed and that the necessary business changes are put in place in the public and private sectors to take advantage of the new legal opportunities. In particular, to ensure that all Bangladeshi citizens and businesses:

- Have easy access to electronic payment facilities for e-commerce including mobile payments

- Are able to use email communications with all government agencies and ministries, and to digitally sign electronic communications for any government transaction where a high level of authentication is essential

How the ICT Roadmap will deliver this: By establishing a Certified Authority to oversee the provision of digital certificates enabled by the ICT Act 2006, and development of a partnership with the banks to establish the business and

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technical infrastructure needed to make e-commerce and e-government transactions a reality.

4.2: Accelerating development of a pro-competitive regulatory regime for telecommunications Objective: To ensure that Bangladesh is a regional leader in availability, quality and cost of broadband infrastructure and services How the ICT Roadmap will deliver this: By establishing a liberalized and competitive marketplace for telecommunications in Bangladesh, bringing widespread access to broadband at affordable costs. Specific actions include:

The Government of Bangladesh to commit to full privatization of BTCL, publishing a clear roadmap for sale within 18-24 months. International evidence suggests that privatised, competitive telecommunications markets contribute more to GDP growth, to taxation revenues for government, and to employment levels than do public sector monopolies.

BTRC to publish a strategy for development of the Bangladesh telecoms market, giving

current market actors and potential new entrants greater clarity about: BTRC’s strategy for market development, key milestones, and the principles it will apply. We recommend that the strategy should cover in particular:

Driving forward a transparent and cost-based interconnection regime Increasing competition on the international gateway Moving to a converged licensing regime, with greater use of class licensing Introduction of a spectrum trading regime Establishment of a Universal Service Fund to assist with broadband infrastructure

roll-out in rural areas.

MoPT to commission an Independent Organisational Review of BTRC aimed at strengthening its capacity, enabling it to bring in more professional economics, legal and telecoms expertise within a more flexible pay and grading structure.

Work Stream 5: Leadership and Governance 5.1 Establishing effective cross-government leadership and governance of the ICT Roadmap Objective: To ensure that: a) accountability for delivering all aspects of the roadmap and associated elements is clear to all stakeholders b) effective structures and processes are in place to ensure successful delivery. How the ICT Roadmap will deliver this: Through a range of strengthened governance mechanisms, including: − The ICT Taskforce taking overall responsibility for the ICT Roadmap − Underpinning the ICT Taskforce with a full-time Government CIO (Chief Information Officer)

reporting directly to Taskforce and the Chief Advisor, and supported by a small ICT Roadmap Programme Management Office

− Establishing formal public reporting processes to monitor progress on delivery of the ICT Roadmap

− Reducing overlap and confusion in both the actual activities and the formal remits of a

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number of the key bodies, by: − Vesting overall strategic ownership, coordination and monitoring of the ICT

Roadmap with the ICT Roadmap PMO/ eGovernance Cell, reporting to the Government Chief Information Officer and the ICT Taskforce

− Mandating BCC to provide delivery support and capability building for Ministries, with a refocused agenda similar to India’s National Institute for Smart Governance, and taking over the delivery and support projects previously managed by SICT..

5.2 Improving ICT strategy and delivery within Ministries Objective: To ensure that individual Ministries have effective governance structures and processes in place, alongside with all the necessary skills, to ensure successful delivery. How the ICT Roadmap will deliver this: − Improving ICT governance within Ministries, by:

− Defining the role, specification, and privileges of ICT Focal Points, including giving them budgetary power over ICT expenditure in their ministries

− Creating close reporting links between the Focal Points and the Government CIO − Developing an ICT Centre of Excellence in each ministry, reporting to the ICT Focal

Point. − Addressing internal ICT skills shortages within the government by:

− Enabling the ICT Centres of Excellence to recruit staff at market rates − Making “computer literacy” (basic ICT user skills) a compulsory part of all examinations

for government jobs

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Figure 1.3: ICT Roadmap Timetable and Key Milestones

Leadership & Coordination

Empowering Citizens

Growing the ICT Sector

Enabling the market

1.1 Universal access

1.2 e-Bangla

1.3 ICT in Education

National ICT Roadmap for Bangladesh

1 Jan 2009 1 Jan 2010 1 Jan 2011 1 Jan 2012 1 Jan 2013

Multi-stakeholder partnership launched

Launch of communications campaign

60% of Bangladeshis have ICT access

eBangla Partnership launched

eBangla National Strategy published All government web content now available in Bangla

Vision document published

New ICT curriculum launched

All secondary and higher secondary schools have Internet connectivity

ICT labs in all higher secondary schools

ICT labs in all secondary schools. ICT is mandatory part of curriculum


First release of One Stop Shop

2.2 One Stop Shop

2.3 Standards


All Ministries to have launched “quick win” e-services

Vision documents published for key sectors

2.1 eServices

All school leavers have

basic ICT skills

eGovernment Interoperability Framework v1.0 published




Launch rebranding of Bangladesh and international ICT investment campaign

Review of EEF completed

ICT tax holiday extended

Launch of industry/ academia skills partnership All universities part of broadband research and education network

Phase 1 Technology Parks launched at Chittagong and Khulna

3.3 Skills

3.4 ICT Clusters

Pilot Hi-Tech Park opened

First Digital Certificates issued by CA

Certified Authority established

Chief Information Officer appointed

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

ICT Finacial Taskforce report published

Banking best practice published

Technology Park Development Corporation established

Technology Parks operating in every Division of Bangladesh

Bangladeshis able to transact through credit card over internet and mobile phone

Chief Information Officer publishes quarterly reports on delivery of ICT Roadmap

Phase 1: Building Momentum Phase 2: Achieving Critical Mass Phase 3: Transformation

5.1 Cross-government

5.2 Within Ministries

New powers for ICT Focal Points

All Ministries have ICT Centres of Excellence

Computer Literacy compulsory for all new government jobs

100% of Bangladeshis have

ICT access

Second release of One Stop Shop, including mobile channel

Majority of citizen and SME dealings with government now take place via one of the One Stop Shop channels


International business surveys show Bangladesh recognised as a regional leader for ICT services and outsourcing

Timetable published for BTCL privatisation

BTRC publishes strategic roadmap for telecoms competion

BTRC publishes annual reports and updates of competition roadmap

GoB is a regional leader in e-service sophistication and citizen focus as benchmarked by the UN

3.2 Access to Finance

3.1 International Campaign

4.2 Competitive telecoms

4.1 Removing legal barriers

Bangladesh is a regional leader in availability, quality

and cost of broadband

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2. Introduction Purpose of this document This document serves the purpose of:

- Describing the main findings of the S2-ICT project “Development of a National ICT Roadmap / Action Plan for Bangladesh”, including the proposed ICT Roadmap for Bangladesh

- Presenting a series of actions and next steps to be agreed and taken forward by

the Government of Bangladesh

Who should read it The target audience is listed below

- All senior management at the Ministry for Science and ICT and the Bangladesh Computer Council involved in management of the Support for Public Sector Development use of ICT project

- Other government personnel in Bangladesh who are involved in ICT and related

projects (e.g. MOSICT, e-Gov cell in the Chief Advisors Office, etc.)

- All stakeholders who will be participating in the roadmap delivery, in particular:

Leaders from the Bangladesh business community Non-governmental organisations and other representatives of

Bangladesh civil-society Opinion formers in academia and the media Decision-makers in the international donor organisations active in

Bangladesh

Context In 2002, the Bangladesh government adopted a National Policy on ICT. Six years later, however, progress has been disappointing. As stated in the RfP for this assignment: “In Bangladesh, Government use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), especially those related to the Internet is still underdeveloped. The Ministry of Science and Information and Communication Technology (MOSICT), the government agency responsible for ICT related issues has not been able to achieve the goals set out for E-Governance in the National ICT policy of 2002. The Government of Bangladesh has inadequate capacity and infrastructure to harness the benefits of ICT in improving public sector management and processes. Use of ICT within the Government is very limited and only a small number of civil servants have Internet and email access. Furthermore, strategic ICT planning skills are in short supply within the Government.”

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Against that background, Gov3 Limited – together with Bangladesh partners, Spinnovation and DNet – were appointed by the Government of Bangladesh to develop: “A short, medium and long term National ICT Action Plan or Roadmap for Bangladesh on the basis of the National ICT Policy 2002, that provides detailed action plans for the (i) use of ICT in Bangladesh’s development efforts and (ii) development of Bangladesh’s ICT sector”

3. Methodology In preparation of this report, we: - Conducted research on existing policy initiatives and programs related to ICT

development in Bangladesh - Conducted extensive stakeholder consultations - Developed an “Overview Report” reflecting the current state of ICT development in

Bangladesh and outlining a suggested approach for the ICT Roadmap - Sought stakeholder views on the outline approach for the ICT Roadmap which we

had proposed in our Overview Report - Conducted a prioritization exercise to evaluate the ICT policies and programs that

will have the greatest impact in Bangladesh (see Chapter 5 of this report for more detail on this process)

- Developed a “Thrust Report” that described the outputs of the prioritization exercise

and suggested a way forward for the ICT Roadmap - Collected stakeholder input on the Thrust Report - Deepened the analysis of the Thrust Report to provide detailed priorities and

recommendations for each of the Mission Critical Programmes for Bangladesh - Developed the ICT Roadmap / Action Plan for Bangladesh (this document), and are

currently conducting consultations on this document This report is the first draft of the final output of the S2-ICT Project “Development of a National ICT Roadmap / Action Plan for Bangladesh”. The final Roadmap document will take account of input by stakeholders on this draft.

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4. Current state analysis In general, Bangladesh is falling behind a number of other countries in the region in use of ICTs for development, knowledge economy and e-Governance, as illustrated by the following five figures. The first three show the progress which Bangladesh has made over the past five years against the three indicators developed by the United Nations to track progress against Target 18 of the Millennium Development Goals: “In cooperation with the private sector, make available the benefits of new technologies, especially information and communications”. The indicators are:

- Personal computers per 100 people - Internet users per 100 people

- Telephone lines and cellular subscribers per 100 people

These show a mixed picture. Figure 4.1 highlights a strong growth rate in PC penetration since 2000 – but from an extremely low base of 0.15% of the population so there are still only 1.2 PCs per 100 Bangladeshis. This growth has brought PC penetration up to the level of countries such as India and Vietnam, but lagging behind Sri Lanka, China and Malaysia. Figure 4.1. Personal computers

0%

100%

200%

300%

400%

500%

600%

700%

800%

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90

Millennium Development Goals > Personal Computers

Growth rate of PCs,2000-2004

PCs per 100 of population, 2004

Source: Gov3 analysis, using data from UN Millennium Development Goal Indicators site at tp://mdgs.un.org/unsd/mdg/Data.aspx

Australia

China

Singapore

Bangladesh

India Malaysia

Nepal

S. Korea

Sri Lanka

Vietnam

Pakistan

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However, Figure 4.2 highlights that although PC penetration has caught up with or overtaken some neighbours, Bangladesh has been far less successful in translating this into significant Internet use by Bangladeshi citizens – with Bangladesh ranking lowest on this measure among the countries highlighted, and also growing weakly. Figure 4.2. Internet use

Millennium Development Goals > Internet use

Growth rate of

Internet users,2000-2006

Internet users per 100 of population, 2006


0%

1000%

2000%

3000%

4000%

5000%

6000%

7000%

0 20 40 60 80

AustraliaChinaSingapore

Bangladesh

India

Malaysia

Nepal

S. Korea

Sri Lanka

Vietnam

Pakistan

Finally, Figure 4.3 highlights the area of greatest progress: access to telephony. Driven largely by an explosion of demand for mobile telephony after the liberalising Telecommunications Act of 2001, Bangladesh has seen the strongest growth rates of the benchmarked countries by a significant margin, with over 1 in 3 Bangladeshis now having telephone access.

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Figure 4.3. Access to telephony

Millennium Development Goals > Fixed and cellular telephony

Growth rate,2000-2006

Fixed lines and cellular subscriptions per 100 of population, 2006


0%

1000%

2000%

3000%

4000%

5000%

0 50 100 150 200 250 300

AustraliaChina

Singapore

Bangladesh

IndiaMalaysia

Nepal S. KoreaSri Lanka

Vietnam

Pakistan

The following two charts then show progress by the same group of benchmarked countries on the deployment and use of ICT within the government itself (looking first at 2002 and then 2007). The data comes from the United Nations’ annual surveys of eGovernment, and shows how Bangladesh has been assessed by the United Nations against two measures:

- The number and sophistication of e-services made available (that is, the “Web Measure Index” shown on the horizontal axis); and

- The quality of the citizen experience of online engagement with government (that

is, the “eParticipation” index shown on the vertical axis).

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Figure 4.5. UN e-Government Benchmark 2002

0.0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9

United Nations eGovernment benchmarking > 2002

Source: United Nations e-Government Readiness Report 2003. 1: e-participation index covering information, consultation and decision-making, 2: web-government index covering interactivity, transactions and networked presence.

E-p

artic

ipat

ion

mat

urity

1

E-service maturity2

Australia

China

Singapore

Bangladesh

India

MalaysiaNepalPakistan

S. Korea

Sri Lanka

Vietnam

Figure 4.6. UN e-Government Benchmark 2007

United Nations eGovernment benchmarking > 2007

Source: United Nations e-Government Readiness Report 2008. 1: e-participation index covering information, consultation and decision-making, 2: web-government index covering interactivity, transactions and networked presence.

E-p

artic

ipat

ion

mat

urity

1

E-service maturity2

0.0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

0.8

0.9

1.0

0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9

Australia

China

Singapore

Bangladesh

India

Malaysia

NepalPakistan

S. Korea

Sri Lanka

Vietnam

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These charts suggest that, although Bangladesh has made progress in both the number and the quality of its e-Governance services, it has not been doing so at the same pace as other Asian countries (with the exception of Nepal, which it has overtaken on both measures in the UN benchmark). What is the reason for this relative lack of progress? In principle, it seemed to us in approaching this assignment that there could be three potential explanations:

a) That Bangladesh faces a unique set of development challenges, which put it at a significant disadvantage when compared with other developing countries in the region

b) That there has been a lack of a strategic and policy focus on this area by the

government

c) That government strategies in this area have been less impactful in Bangladesh because of weakness in the way in which delivery of these strategies has been approached.

Our conclusion is that, although each of these potential explanations has an element of substance, the key problems lie very much in the third area, around implementation. Figures 4.7 and 4.8 substantiate this analysis. Figure 4.7 gives a high level view of what – based on our desk research and stakeholder consultation to date – we see as Bangladesh’s major strengths and weaknesses as an Information Society.

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Figure 4.7. Strengths and Weaknesses for ICT in Bangladesh Sector Strengths Weaknesses Society - Strong grass-roots

entrepreneurialism and innovation in civil society

- Low cost of computer hardware and accessories

- Widespread and growing access to and use of mobile phones

- Use of intermediaries to allow people to access information who lack the skills to do this on their own (e.g. literacy and IT skills)

- Largely on track for meeting Millennium Development Goals

- Low levels of income - Bangladesh is lagging behind its

neighbours in ICT development and use - Lack of effective market framework for the

development of ICT is limiting its potential for widespread use.

- Lack of infrastructure, including electricity, fixed line telephones and Internet

- High cost of Internet connectivity, and very low levels of access

- Lack of local Internet content to drive demand for ICTs

- No policy on privacy and protection from unsecured content

Industry - Low cost of IT outsourcing in Bangladesh in terms of Investment in Human Resource

- Good basic English language skills and IT skills among IT graduates

- Growing global demand for outsourcing

- Lack of international awareness of Bangladesh as a possible source of outsourcing

- Shortage of higher-level skills needed for ICT sector

- Bank financing is in scarcity; no structured allocation for ICT sector

- Lack of competition in key areas of the market

- Regulatory framework restricting the widespread adoption of new technologies (e.g. VOIP, Wimax)

- Lack of project management and marketing skills

- One-size fits all procurement policy, so low levels of SME access to Government of Bangladesh (GoB) procurements

Government - ICT designated as a “thrust” area for Bangladesh

- National ID project has potential to enable integrated citizen-centric service delivery

- Creation of Access to Information (A2I) programme in the Chief Advisor’s Office with aim of coordinating ICT and e-Government efforts from across government

- e-Governance Horizon Scan report provides a strong basis for development

- Overlapping and uncoordinated governance mechanisms

- Need for stronger ICT leadership from the centre

- Some good early examples of e-Government, but key building blocks (eg on interoperability, and common data sets) are missing.

- Limited skills for ICT-enabled public sector transformation

- Parliament is non-functional, so weaker democratic legitimacy behind government initiatives

- No critical mass of ICT users within government

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Two things emerge from this analysis. First, it is clear that although Bangladesh does indeed face major challenges, these are not unique. Many other developing countries in the region face similar or larger problems. Second, Bangladesh also has a significant number of strengths to draw on, which in principle we would expect to have seen leading through into greater progress in key areas where similar countries have made more progress. So if the relative lack of progress is not due to a lack of some significant national assets for the Information Society, what of our second potential explanation: that there has been a relative lack of government focus on this area, leading to those assets being under-exploited? Again, the evidence suggests that this is not the case. Indeed, as summarised in Figure 4.8 below, there is a significant history of strategic and policy focus on ICT in Bangladesh, going back over two decades. Although Bangladesh has a history of ICT use dating back to the 1960s, efforts started to accelerate with the formation of the Bangladesh Computer Council (BCC) in 1986. From this point, Bangladesh began a series of policies and Acts to promote ICT development in the country. Major developments included the 1997 recommendations on ICT development, and the 2002 ICT policy. More recently, an e-Government cell has been created in the Chief Advisors Unit, and completed an e-Government Horizon scan in December 2007. Figure 4.8. A brief history of ICT use in Bangladesh Year Development 1964 Computer use started back in 1964 by Atomic Energy Center, Dhaka and

Universities, first main frame computer came to Bangladesh in 1964

1970s Growth of ICT was nominal due to turbulent political scenario and economic depression

1980-1985 Introduction of desktop PCs (386 DX) in small numbers in some government institutions

1886 Formation of Bangladesh Computer Council (BCC)

1990 Formulation of BCC Act

1993 Internet introduced in Bangladesh. The Internet came late in Bangladesh, with unix to unix copy (UUCP) e-mail beginning in 1993 by Pradesta Ltd

1996 In June, 1996 the government decided to allow private companies to act as Internet Services Providers (ISPs) using VSATs (two-way satellite ground stations). Internet Protocol (IP) connectivity established in 1996. By July 1997 there were an estimated 5,500 IP and UUCP accounts

1997 In June 1997, the Ministry of Commerce, Government of Bangladesh appointed a Committee to look into the problems and prospects of export of software from Bangladesh. It was undertaken by JRC Commission in 1997 under the government initiative. JRC commission came up with 45 recommendations

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1998 The government decided on June, 1998 to withdraw all import duties and VAT from

all computer hardware and software, which fortunately coincided with global reduction of prices of computer hardware. This has brought the prices of computers down to a level affordable by middle income households.

1998 Telecom Policy 1998 introduced

2001 Telecommunication Act 2001 established. The Act led to the formation of the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (BTRC) in order to serve the goal of development and efficient regulation of telecommunication system and service in Bangladesh

2001 Formation of Ministry of Science and ICT

2002 BTRC started operation on January 31, 2002

2002 First draft ICT policy was formulated in October 2002 by BCC. The objective of the policy was: - The creation of infrastructure facilities and an ICT legal framework to facilitate

the integration of ICT and the development of the software industry - The provision of incentives to local and foreign entrepreneurs to promote ICT

sector development - The development of an effective ICT infrastructure allowing the international

and national networks open access - The promotion of ICT integration in all economic sectors to encourage

transparency, efficiency, and good governance - The establishment of regulatory frameworks for a variety of key ICT issues, and

to ensure the provision and quality of private ICT education - The creation of reliable and accessible national databases - The promotion of ICT use, training, and culture in the public sector - The development of a sizable resource of globally-competitive ICT

professionals able to meet local and global market requirements - The continuous promotion of the ICT industry through the creation of an

effective ICT institution - The enactment of laws and regulations that conform to World Trade

Organization stipulations to allow for consistent ICT growth

2002 MOSICT established ICT Incubator giving over 68000 sq. ft. space to IT companies with all dedicated infrastructure facilities in 2002.

2003-2004 On 3 April 2003 National Taskforce Committee of MOSICT decided to implement the Hi-Tech park project. Accordingly step was taken to establish Hi-Tech park on 231.385 acres of land. A memorandum of understanding was signed between Ministry of land and MOSICT and the land was handed over to MOSICT on 24 April 2004 by the Ministry of Land. Project is still in progress.

2005 MoSICT assigned BCC to instigate 4 projects to foster a sustainable e-readiness in Bangladesh. They are: - S1-ICT Project [e-Governance] - S2-ICT Project [National ICT Roadmap Policy] - S3-ICT Project [Network Infrastructure] - S4-ICT Project [Human Resource & Training]

2006 Submarine Cable connection to Global Information Superhighway (SEA-ME-WE-4)

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established in 2006 with 1.28 terabyte data transfer capacity

2007 Formation of e-Gov cell under Chief Advisors Office (CAO) to coordinate all ministries for successful implementation of e-Governance

2007 Establishment of focal points in each ministries through assignment of a Joint Secretary to coordinate with the e-Gov Cell and within the ministry

2007 In a Gazette notification, the Government has instructed the allocation of minimum 2% of its ADP for each ministry

2007-2008 Voter ID and National ID Project taken by EC

December 2007

e-Government Horizon Scan report completed

2008 S1-ICT, S2-ICT, S3-ICT and S4-ICT begin work

Against this background, our conclusion is that the relative lack of progress cannot be explained by a lack of focus or political priority. Instead, we believe the explanation lies in our third potential area: that government strategies in this area have had less impact in Bangladesh because of weaknesses in the way in which the delivery of these strategies has been approached. Based on our consultations and our knowledge of successful approaches in other countries, our analysis is that the weaknesses lie in five main areas: 1. A change agenda which is too broad to be effectively managed, with

insufficient prioritisation on where to focus budgets and management attention

Much of the strategic work by the government which we have examined so far takes a broad and ambitious approach to the scope of ICT policy change which is desired in Bangladesh. For example, the 2002 IT policy contained 10 major areas of focus, and 107 detailed recommendations for action. In January 2008, , the e-Governance Horizon Scan report undertaken by the Chief Advisor’s Office sets out seven major areas of focus, and 31 priority lines of recommended action. And most recently, the Bangladesh Better British Forum has been working on a proposal for a new 2008 IT policy, which consists of broad objectives, 58 strategic themes and 267 action items. In all cases, the detailed actions themselves each represent significant programmes of change in their own right. On the one hand, this breadth of ambition is good. The danger, however, is that this leads to the government seeking to do everything at once, with no clear sense of how the different recommendations should be prioritised - and therefore results in under-delivering.

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2. Unclear and uncoordinated governance structures and processes There are a wide range of bodies involved in ICT governance for Bangladesh, as illustrated in Figure 4.9 below. Many of the stakeholders we have approached have commented that it is unclear where accountabilities lie. Figure 4.9. ICT governance structures in the Government of Bangladesh

PMO ICT Task Force

Ministry of PlanningMoSICT

BCCMinistry of Commerce

Ministry A: Focal Points

The core Ministry and focal point of government’s

activities related to science and ICT. It is for coordinating all ICT related activities taken by various government bodies

Highest strategic council with multi-

stakeholder representation for

facilitating accelerated implementation of ICT

related action plan through quick decision

making

For fostering growth of Knowledge economy primarily growth of export of software

and ITES

E-Gov Cell

A2I Project

SICT

IBPC

High-tech Park Project

DIIA

BKIICT

For supporting the EC of ICT taskforce and coordinating

implementation of ICT related projects

EC of ITF

Ministry B: Focal Points

Ministry C: Focal Points

ICT Incubator

3. Lack of effective cross-government programme management As ICT is a cross-cutting area, it essentially involves more than one agency for implementation. For this reason, a taskforce was established under the Prime Minister’s office in 2000. However, the feedback we have had from stakeholders is that it has not operated effectively. Relations between the Task Force and the Ministry of Science and ICT were unclear; the key staff involved in supporting the Task Force had other important priorities which conflicted with this role; and the Task Force has met very infrequently. More generally, we have seen no evidence of standard programme management techniques being applied to ICT policy coordination: that is, clear assignation of responsibilities, measurable

22

targets and delivery plans for projects, and programme-wide risk management and issue escalation.

4. Lack of skills and capability

Again, stakeholder feedback has been that limited skills and capability within the government has been a factor holding back delivery. Although there has been significant investment on training, it has had little impact, in large part due to training content often having been divorced from the specific work responsibilities of participants, with little opportunity or motivation then to deploy the skills in the workplace.

5. An implementation approach which historically has tended to be focused

on government delivery, rather than facilitation and enablement of private and voluntary sector solutions.

There is a clear sense in which much action previously has been taken forward in a “government-centric” way, rather than in partnership with the private sector and civic society. The successful expansion of the mobile telephony market is a good example of the dramatic impacts that can be achieved when the government puts in place an enabling framework for the private sector to work within, but too frequently the feedback we are getting from private sector stakeholders is that the government can be slow to let the market innovate (for example in new ICTs such as WiMax). Similarly, feedback from NGOs is often that they see government involvement with their work on ICT for development as something to be minimised, rather than as a lead player in catalysing partnerships in the way governments in some other countries are perceived.

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5. Structure of the roadmap A top-level view of the ICT Roadmap for Bangladesh is set out in the figure below. This structure was originally discussed and agreed as part of the Overview Report, and has served as a basis for the development of the roadmap and specific recommendations. It was developed with the intention of learning from and addressed the five historic weaknesses in ICT policy implementation that were identified during the Current State Assessment and summarised in the previous chapter.

2

Citizens SMEs

Civil Servants

Users

AccessI have easy and affordable

access to ICT

MotivationI see real benefits from ICT which are directly

relevant to my life


E-democracy

E-citizens

E-business

E-Finance

E-SME

E-Agriculture

E-education

E-health

E-disaster and climate change

E-culture

1 Empowering citizens

5Leadership and Governance

3 Growing the ICT sector

Hardware

Software

Applications

Digital contentConfidence

I have all the skills I need to use ICT, and I

feel trust and security using it

4 Enabling the market

Fiscal framework

Regulatory framework

Legal framework

Telecoms

The key workstreams shown in this ICT Roadmap are: 1. Empowering Citizens: embracing an integrated strategy to address the access,

confidence and motivation barriers to ICT adoption and use by citizens and businesses:

o Access: both citizens and businesses need to be empowered to access information and knowledge through ICTs. The growth of the use of mobile phones has had an impact on people’s ability to access information – and the Internet can offer an even richer experience. But access to ICT, especially the Internet, is still far too low in Bangladesh. More needs to be done to provide an environment in which the market for ICT can flourish, and access to ICTs is more widespread.

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o Confidence: additionally, users need the confidence to be able effectively use ICT. Where people do not have the skills to access ICT directly (e.g. literacy and basic IT skills), intermediaries have proven to be a useful way of allowing them to access information.

o Motivation: the lack of local content relevant to Bangladeshis is a serious issue. Without relevant content, there is little benefit to the use of ICT. While some progress has been made in developing relevant local content, there is still not enough. More can be done to foster the development of content, including content development at the grassroots level and from government.

2. Transforming Public Services: some progress has been made in government

use of ICT, including the development of a national portal, and the publication of the Gazette online. However, the application of ICT to government has largely been to computerise existing systems, and there has been little in the way of transformation of government to meet user needs. While computerisation and informatisation also provide real benefits to customers, the most significant benefits from e-Government are from transformation – which requires significant changes to business processes and working culture, which in turn requires the leaders and deliverers of public services to be motivated and incentivised to change.

3. Growing the ICT sector: the ICT sector is a potential success story in

Bangladesh. The decision in 1998 to withdraw all import duties and VAT from all computer hardware and software allowed a nascent industry to develop. The ICT Incubator Project has fostered a number of companies, and companies that have used Bangladesh for outsourcing recognise many benefits in Bangladesh. Denmark, in particular, is expanding its investment quickly, and there is growth potential from a variety of countries’ actions. However, growth of software exports went into reverse in 2007, so further action is clearly needed. Within the overall Roadmap, we need to ensure that growing demand for ICT products and services by citizens, businesses and the private sector in Bangladesh helps to underpin a thriving and growing supply side

4. Enabling the market: this workstream will cover actions to ensure that the legal,

regulatory and fiscal framework within which the demand and supply sides of the Knowledge Economy in Bangladesh interact are supportive and enabling. Bangladesh can do much to improve the market environment for ICT. Freeing the market to greater competition and enabling a regulatory environment which is more open would significantly improve market conditions and reduce the cost of connectivity. Taking steps to enable the market framework will be one of the highest impact “quick wins” for Bangladesh.

5. Leadership and Governance: actions to ensure that the overall roadmap is

delivered in practice, by addressing institutional and governance weaknesses that resulted in slow and incomplete implementation of the 2002 IT Policy.

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6. Prioritisation framework Mapping of existing initiatives To begin the options appraisal process, we carried out a mapping of existing recommendations and policies in Bangladesh. We also looked at existing initiatives and planned projects for Bangladesh. These maps are included in a set of Annexes to this report (which are available as a separate document): - Annex A – which maps out current GoB projects which are relevant to the ICT

Roadmap framework - Annex B - which maps out existing GoB policies which are relevant to the ICT

Roadmap framework, together with new policies proposed by the GoB through the recent Horizon Scan report by the eGovernance Cell of the Chief Advisor’s office

- Annex C – which maps out, against the structure of the ICT Roadmap, the

recommendations of the Horizon Scan Report published by the eGovernment Cell in the Chief Advisors Office

- Annex D – which maps out stakeholders’ proposals for new policies which have

been made to us through the project, through the programme of stakeholder workshops and interviews which we have conducted.

Together, these inputs gave us a long list of 262 possible priorities for Bangladesh in total. We also reviewed the 267 recommended actions emerging from the Better Business Forum in their recommendations to the government on a new 2008 IT Policy. Figure 6.1. Inputs to the policy clusters

26

Synthesis into policy clusters To assist with the analysis process, we then synthesised the 529 initiatives and recommendations into 20 “policy clusters” – broad categories of actions of a similar nature and purpose. The table below summarises these policy clusters, grouped under the five main workstreams identified in the ICT Roadmap framework, and explains the types of policies that fall into each category. Figure 6.2. Policy clusters for Bangladesh Empowering Users 1. Community-based

access to ICT and ICT skills

- Community ICT access points / telecenters - Facilitated community access to ICT (e.g. through

mediators) - Basic ICT skills for all - Ensuring universal coverage of ICT access points and

telecenters - ICT support for women - ICT for disadvantaged groups

2. Bangla content - Fostering the development of new local content in the Bangla language

- Digitising existing content (e.g. libraries, national archive, government content, etc.)

- Translation of relevant content into Bangla language - Fostering technical standards to facilitate rapid

development and diffusion of Bangla content 3. Open government /

citizen access to information

- Citizen rights to communicate electronically with government

- Access to information act, giving citizens the right to access all government content

- Policy for the free commercial re-use of government information

4. ICT in education - ICT access in schools - e-Learning - Network for teachers to share information and course

material - ICT infrastructure for schools

5. SME support on ICT adoption

- Small business ICT strategy - Information programme to inform SMEs about the

potential uses and benefits of ICT in their businesses - Financial assistance for ICT adoption by SMEs - Tax or other incentives for ICT adoption by SMEs


6. Citizen-centric government services

- e-Services - service delivery channels

27

- eGovernance standards and policies ITEC Sector 7. International trade and

investment campaign - International marketing campaign for Bangladesh as a

location for outsourcing - Participation in international events and roadshows - International collaboration and support for export

8. Supply of specialist ITEC skills

- Specialist/advanced ICT education in schools - ICT education in universities - Adult ICT education - Specialist skill training - Incentives to encourage students to specialise in ICTs

9. ITEC cluster development

- High tech parks - ICT incubator

10. Access to finance - Government backed loans for ITEC investments - Pump-priming venture capital funds for the ITEC sector

11. R&D and innovation support

- Government support of R&D - Fostering university / industry partnerships

12. Open Source development

- Policy for use of open source software - Incentives for open source development

13. Preferential procurement policy for local companies

- Policy for preferential treatment of local companies for ICT procurement

14. Tax policy - Tax incentives for the purchase of hardware, software, IT services, etc.

- Tax incentives to support the ITEC industry Market framework 15. Pro-competitive

regulatory framework - Regulatory policy to foster competition - Removing advantages for incumbent operator - Separation of wholesale from retail - Class licensing - Open spectrum allocation - Increase capacity of BTRC

16. Removing barriers to e-commerce

- Legal recognition of electronic signatures - Work with banks to enable e-payments

17. Digital IPR - IPR regime for digital content - International IPR harmonisation - IRR enforcement

18. Consumer protection - Privacy - Security

Governance 19. Strengthen and clarify

cross-government governance arrangements (structures, processes and incentives)

- Clarify roles and responsibilities for ICT in government - Strengthen cross-government programme management

capability - Create a central leadership team within government to

take ownership for the ICT roadmap

28

- Put the necessary incentives and levers in place to ensure cross-government coordination and improve collaboration

20. Strengthen governance arrangements within ministries

- Formalise the role of ICT Focal Points at the Ministry and Agency level to ensure service delivery

- Ensure the Focal Points have the necessary resources, recognition and incentives to be effective

- Strengthen programme and project management in ministries

We believe that this list is comprehensive, with all specific projects, actions and priorities fitting under one of the broad headings. This list also incorporates feedback from stakeholders, who were consulted through interviews and workshops. Having developed this list of 20 policy clusters, our next step was to evaluate each cluster against six key assessment criteria, which we have then aggregated together to give two overall summary measure of relative importance and feasibility, as illustrated below. Figure 6.3. Key assessment criteria

The scoring basis for each criterion is described in the table below. Each is based on a relative rather than absolute assessment of the policy clusters: in other words, each policy cluster is not assessed in terms of its impact, feasibility etc in quantified terms, but in terms of whether or not it is likely to be higher or lower than the other potential policy interventions.

29

Figure 6.4. Criteria for options appraisal Criterion Scoring system

1. Extent of contribution to poverty reduction / social cohesion

Level 3 – Significant direct impact on poverty reduction and social cohesion in short to medium term Level 2 – Some direct or indirect Level 1 – Little significant impact Level 0 – No immediate impact

2. Extent of contribution to economic growth Level 3 – Significant direct impact on wealth creation in short to medium term Level 2 – Some direct or indirect impact on wealth creation in short to medium term Level 1 – Little significant impact in short to medium term Level 0 – No immediate impact in the short to medium term

3. Breadth and Scale of Impact

Level 3 – Cross cutting, impacts multiple barriers in multiple sectors Level 2 – Addresses a clear barrier to Information Society development in BD, which impacts multiple sectors OR addresses multiple barriers in a single sector Level 1 – Addresses a single barrier for a single sector (note: sector defined as small businesses, citizens, government, ITEC) Level 0 – Little impact, or impacts a small number of people

4. Size of potential multiplier effects

Level 3 - Very strong multiplier effect Level 2 - Strong multiplier effect Level 1 - Some multiplier effect Level 0 - No/little multiplier effect

5. Affordability Level 3 – Minimal direct cost Level 2 - Low direct costs Level 1 - Medium cost Level 0 - High cost

6. Deliverability Level 3 – Immediately deliverable with current capabilities; low risk implementation Level 2 – Low intrinsic risk, but requires new capabilities to be developed Level 1 – Complex and risky; requiring significant change management capability Level 0 – Highly complex and high risk delivery

30

The judgements we have made in arriving at this relative assessment have been informed by:

- Gov3 experience in other countries

- The analysis of drivers of and barriers to development of the Information Society which was undertaken by the eGovernance Cell to inform the Horizon Scan Report

- Our own analysis of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats

faced by the ITEC supply industries in Bangladesh (see Annex F)

- Extensive stakeholder consultation in Bangladesh The final results of our appraisal have also been shared with stakeholders, and their feedback has been incorporated.

31

7. Prioritisation results In this chapter we describe the initial results we have obtained through this Options Appraisal process – and which has been validated through stakeholder consultations.

Strategic fit Strategic fit is an aggregate measure of the suitability of a particular policy for Bangladesh. The two main priorities for Bangladesh, in light of the Millennium Development Goals, are poverty reduction and economic development. We therefore evaluated the possible thrust areas for Bangladesh against these two priorities, to identify which elements have the best strategic fit for Bangladesh. Based on these two scores, we were able to develop a matrix that shows each of the priorities and how they fit against these two strategic goals for Bangladesh (see figure 7.1 below). Figure 7.1. Analysis of Strategic Fit

Intermediate

Economic Growth0

Pove

rty

Redu

ctio

n / S

ocia

l Coh

esio

n

3

W orkstream

♦ = Empowering Users

♦ = Transforming Government

♦ = Growing the ITEC Sector

♦ = Enabling the Market

♦ = Leadership and Governance

Scoring codes

Level 3 – Significant direct impact in short to medium term

Level 2 – Some direct or indirect impact in short to medium term

Level 1 – Little significant impact in short to medium term

Level 0 – No immediate impact in the short to medium term

How well does the initiative fit with Bangladesh’s priority goals of poverty reduction and economic growth?

Strategic fit

21

0

1 2 3

Community ICTBangla contentCitizen-centric

govt services

ICT in education

SME support

ITEC campaign

Specialist skills

ITEC cluster development

Access to financeR&D supportOpen source

ProcurementTax policy

Pro-competitive market

E-commercebarriers

IPR

Consumer protection

GovernanceMinistry

Governance

Open Government

32

Impact Impact is an aggregate measure, combining two key indicators: the breadth and scale of the impact on Bangladesh, and the multiplier effects associated with the policy. Based on these two scores, we were able to develop a matrix that shows each of the priorities and how large their impact is for Bangladesh (see figure 7.2 below). Figure 7.2. Analysis of Impact

Intermediate

Multiplier effect0

Bre

adth

and

sca

le o

f im

pact

3

W orkstream






Breadth and scale of impactLevel 3 – Cross cutting, impacts multiple barriers in multiple sectors Level 2 – Addresses a clear barrier to Information Society development in BD, which impacts multiple sectors OR adresses multiple barriers in a single sectorLevel 1: Addresses a single barrier for a single sector (note: sector defined as small businesses, citizens, government, ITEC)Level 0 – Little impact, or impacts a small number of people

Multiplier effectLevel 3 - Very strong multiplier effectLevel 2 - Strong multiplier effectLevel 1 - Some multiplier effectLevel 0 - No/little multiplier effect

What is the scale of impact of the initiative for Bangladesh?Impact

21

0

1 2 3

Community ICT Bangla content

Citizen-centric govt services

ICT in edu

SME support

Specialist skills

ITEC clusters

Access to finance R&D supportOpen sourceProcurement

Tax policy


E-commercebarriers

IPR

Consumer protection

Governance

Ministry Governance

ITEC campaign

Open Government

Feasibility Just because a policy is potentially of high impact for Bangladesh, does not necessarily mean it should be a priority. Also important is how feasible it is to deliver that policy successfully. For this reason, we have also done an analysis of the feasibility of the potential thrust areas, by combining the two criteria of deliverability and affordability.

33

Based on these two scores, we were able to develop a matrix that shows each of the priorities and how feasible they are for Bangladesh (see figure 7.3 below). Figure 7.3. Feasibility Analysis

Intermediate

Deliverability0

Affo

rdab

ility

3W orkstream






DeliverabilityLevel 3 – Immediately deliverable with current capabilities; low risk implementationLevel 2 – Low intrinsic risk, but requires new capabilities to be developedLevel 1: Complex and risky; requiring significant change management capabilityLevel 0 – Highly complex and high risk delivery

AffordabilityLevel 3 - Minimal direct costLevel 2 - Low direct costsLevel 1 - Medium costLevel 0 - High cost

How practical is the initiative for Banlgadesh?Feasibility

21

0

1 2 3

Community ICT

Bangla content


ICT in edu

SME support

Specialist skills


Access to finance

R&D support

Open source

Procurement

Tax policy


E-commercebarriersIPR

Consumer protection

Gov structuresProg mgmt

Ministry Governance

ITEC campaignOpen Government

Finally, we combined all three of these aggregate scores (strategic fit, impact and feasibility) to develop a single combined summary matrix reflecting the priority areas for Bangladesh. An analysis of these priority areas is provided below, where “feasibility” is mapped against “importance” – which is derived by taking the average score for each policy cluster across the strategic fit and impact measures described above.

34

Figure 7.4. Priority areas for Bangladesh

Intermediate

Importance

Feas

ibili

tyOptions appraisal > summary results

32

1

1 2 3

65

4

4 5 6

Community ICT

Bangla content


ICT in education

SME support

ITEC campaign

Specialist skills


Access to finance

R&D support

Open source

Procurement

Tax policy Pro-competitive

market

E-commercebarriers

IPR

Consumer protection

Cross-govt governance

Ministry Governance

2

1

3

1

2

3

Key

Vital enablers

Firm priorities (high impact /high feasibility)

Potential priorities (if resourcing and capability risks can be addressed)

Open Government

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8. Recommended thrust areas for Bangladesh For the ICT Roadmap to be successfully implemented, we believe it is vital that a more focused and prioritised approach is taken than was the case after the 2002 IT Policy was published. Rather than pursue a very wide range of initiatives on an equal basis, the Roadmap should be built around a limited set of thrust areas or “Mission Critical Programmes”. In this section, we set out our recommended priorities – both in terms of:

- The Mission Critical Programmes which should be prioritised within each of the five workstream areas in the ICT Roadmap; and

- Priorities for phasing the delivery of each Mission Critical Programme over the

five year duration of the Roadmap.

Mission Critical Programmes As illustrated in Figure 7.4 above, three main groups of policy emerged from our option appraisals process as recommended priorities for Bangladesh:

- First, a set of vital enablers in the “Leadership and Governance” workstream, concerned with improving the capacity of the GoB to drive forward successful implementation of the ICT Roadmap, through changes at both cross-government level and within individual Ministries

- Second, a set of policy actions which we would recommend as thrust areas,

or “mission critical”, because they combine both high levels of impact and strategic fit with relatively high levels of feasibility.

- Finally, an additional set of policy actions which are also potential candidates

for “mission critical” status, but where further work was needed to ensure that affordability and deliverability risks can be effectively overcome.

Further consultation with stakeholders in the wake of our Thrust Report revealed that in the final category there were indeed some high impact actions which could be taken forward at acceptable levels of affordability and delivery risk. As a result of that further analysis and consultation, our recommendation is that the detailed structure of the ICT Roadmap should consist of the 5 overarching workstreams, consisting in total of 14 Mission Critical Programmes, as summarised in Figure 8.1 below.

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Figure 8.1. ICT Roadmap – Workstreams and Mission Critical Programmes Workstream Mission Critical Programmes 1. Empowering Citizens 1.1 Universal Community Based Access to ICT

1.2 e-Bangla 1.3 ICT in Education

2. Transforming Public Services

2.1 Citizen-centric e-Services 2.2 Development of a citizen-centric, multi-channel service delivery system for the Government of Bangladesh

2.3 eGovernment Standards and Policies

3. Growing the ICT sector

3.1: International ICT trade and investment Campaign 3.2. Access to finance for the ICT Sector 3.3: Meeting the Skill Needs of the ICT Sector 3.4: ICT cluster development

4. Enabling the market 4.1: Removing Legal Barriers to e-Commerce

4.2: Accelerating development of a pro-competitive regulatory regime for telecommunications

5. Leadership and coordination

5.1 Ensuring successful delivery of the ICT Roadmap

Further details of our recommendations for each of these Mission Critical Programmes are set out below. First, though, we describe the approach we have taken to building the implementation roadmap for each Project.

Priorities for phasing the delivery of the Mission Critical Programmes Having identified the Mission Critical Programmes, the next step is to detail specific actions to implement each one. Since everything can clearly not be done at once, which elements of the Roadmap need to be started immediately, which can be done later, and in what order? Getting this right is not straightforward. For example, there may be some important activities and investments which should sensibly be left until later in the Roadmap process, but where it is essential to ensure that some critical initial decisions or actions

37

are taken now. We have therefore developed the framework illustrated below in order to help judge the different strategic trade-offs that will be needed through the course of the Roadmap. Figure 8.2. Strategic trade-off model for the Bangladesh ICT Roadmap

User take-up

Time

Strategicfocus

Building momentum

Achieving critical mass

1

2

3 Transformation

Short term Year 1

Medium term Years 2-3

Longer term Years 4-5

In short, our proposal is that the roadmap should go through three major strategic phases:

- In phase 1, the major strategic focus should be on building momentum. In other words, the strategic priority should be put on:

o Actions which help to accelerate belief and confidence across the Government of Bangladesh and the wider stakeholder community that ICT-enabled change is possible and beneficial, by building on the success of the existing eGovernance projects

o Prioritising projects which are low risk and yet can rapidly deliver high levels of user benefit – in order to start generating a user base and to reinforce political support for the Roadmap.

o Irreversibly embedding the ICT Roadmap in governance structures and processes, in order to ensure continuity through the coming period of government transition.

- In phase 2, the strategic focus should shift towards achieving critical mass:

that is, prioritising projects which, over a somewhat longer time period than those prioritised in phase 1, can start to develop a critical mass of users.

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- In phase 3, the strategic focus can start to shift towards transformation: in other

words, to start driving out some of the more significant transformational benefits that widespread connectivity enables.

As the diagram makes clear, these strategic foci are not mutually exclusive, but overlap. Thus in the Transformation phase, there will still be significant work needed to increase adoption and use of ICTs across the government and Bangladeshi society. Similarly, in the Building Momentum phase, there will also be some important initial steps needed in order to plan for and enable the subsequent two phases. But the diagram shows how the strategic weight between each consideration should, in our view, shift over time. We have used this model to inform our recommendations on the phasing of delivery plans in each Mission Critical Programme. Our thinking on how the “three phase model” applies to each Mission Critical Programme is described below. Then, in Section 9, we draw all of this together to set out the overall ICT Roadmap for Bangladesh.

Delivery priorities: Leadership and Coordination Effective ICT development requires horizontal governance mechanisms, however all the traditional governance mechanisms (budgets, accountability systems, management structures) are vertical. This is a problem faced by all countries implementing ICT-enabled change. Our study has identified ineffective governance systems as a significant barrier to ICT development in Bangladesh. Previous efforts to improve Bangladesh’s ICT performance – notably the 2002 IT Policy – have been hindered by weaknesses in moving from policy to actions capable of delivering sustainable change. The recent relaunch of the ICT Taskforce provides a relevant top-level governance structure for driving the ICT Roadmap, but additional changes are needed to make the Taskforce more effective. Within Ministries, the ICT Focal Points provide a good starting point for effective ICT governance, but their role could be strengthened, and additional support is needed. Capacity building is therefore urgently needed to enable the GoB to drive forward the successful implementation of the ICT roadmap, and this we believe should form the single most important priority in the initial “Building Momentum” phase of the ICT Roadmap. Some initial proposals on actions to address each of these were set out in our Overview Report, and more detailed proposals were discussed in the Thrust Report. We have since discussed those initial proposals with a wide range of stakeholders, and received useful feedback. As a result, our recommendations are that the Government of Bangladesh should: 1) Request the ICT Taskforce to take responsibility for “owning” the ICT Roadmap – monitoring its delivery and ensuring blockages are addressed effectively

39

2) Underpin the ICT Taskforce with a full-time “Government Chief Information Officer ”, reporting directly to Taskforce and the Chief Advisor and taking responsibility for driving the ICT roadmap. This person should have board-level experience of driving change, in both the public and private sectors, and be empowered to act as the central focus of leadership across government on ICT issues. 3) Establish a small ICT Roadmap Programme Management Office at the Commission (3-4 people, with professional programme management and change management skills, remunerated at market rates) to support the Government Chief Information Officer, charged with: − Identifying a Senior Responsible Officer (SRO) for each Mission Critical Programme

in the ICT Roadmap – that is, a senior official in a lead Ministry with personal responsibility for delivering each project and its intended benefits

− Working with the SRO for each Mission Critical Programme to establish detailed delivery plans / trajectories in order to track progress against programme objectives

− Monitoring progress against the delivery trajectories - and challenging and supporting the relevant Ministries when they fall behind

− Establishing a programme of regular external healthchecks of Mission Critical Programme (at least every 6 months)

− Working with the donor organisations to ensure that they understand and buy-in to the Roadmap, and will align their funding strategies behind it in an integrated, cross-donor manner

4) Establish formal public reporting processes to monitor progress on delivery of the ICT Roadmap:

− Publish the Government of Bangladesh’s ICT Roadmap Implementation Plan (based on this plan prepared by Gov3, but signed off and owned by the ICT Task Force)

− As part of this, publish the names of the lead officials responsible for each workstream in the ICT Roadmap, along with their email addresses

− Commit to web-based public reporting by the Government Chief Information Officer of implementation progress on a quarterly basis.

5) Clarify the roles of the key organisations involved in ICT policy, to reduce overlap and confusion in both the actual activities and the formal remits of a number of the key bodies. Typically, several types of central leadership and coordination are needed in order to deliver a government strategy such as the ICT Roadmap. Figure 8.3 below sets out the three broad central roles which many governments have found necessary to establish: summarized as Strategy Ownership, Capability Building, and Delivery Support. While it is not essential that a separate organization be created to fulfill each of these, it is essential to recognize that they are very different roles, requiring different skills sets, different organizational cultures, and different relationships with government Ministries and agencies. One of the problems in the current Bangladesh governance arrangements is that several organizations (eg the eGovernance Cell, SICT, BCC) all undertake elements of the three roles.

40

Figure 8.3 Central coordination of ICT policy – the different roles needed

In future, we believe there should be a much clearer distinction between:

− Overall strategic ownership, coordination and monitoring of the ICT Roadmap (which should be done by the ICT Roadmap PMO, which should incorporate the current eGovernance Cell, reporting to the Government Chief Information Officer and the ICT Taskforce)

− Delivery support and capability building for Ministries (which should be done by the BCC, with a refocused agenda more similar to India’s National Institute for Smart Governance and taking on projects and responsibilities from SICT).

6) Improve ICT governance within Ministries, by:

− Defining the role, specification, and privileges of ICT Focal Points, including giving them budgetary power over ICT expenditure in their ministries, to ensure that these roles are consistently seen as senior and empowered ones within Ministries

− Creating close reporting links between the Focal Points and the Government CIO.

− Developing an ICT Centre of Excellence in each ministry, reporting to the ICT Focal Point. These should be responsible for planning, monitoring and evaluation mechanisms covering all ICT projects across the Ministry, and ICT training and capacity building within the Ministry.

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7) Address internal ICT skills shortages within the government by: Enabling the ICT Centres of Excellence to recruit staff at market rates Making “computer literacy” (basic ICT user skills) a compulsory part of all

examinations for Government jobs

Delivery priorities: Empowering Citizens

As described in Section 5 above, the strategy in this area should be to tackle, in parallel, the three major barriers to citizen engagement with ICT in Bangladesh: lack of access to ICT; lack of the skills and confidence to do so; and lack of motivation – that is, lack of perceived benefits from CT which are of direct relevance to the individual’s life or business. Significant progress on all three of these can be made by the market itself – with commercial providers vying to provide affordable ICT and affordable and compelling services which can be accessed though ICT. That is why the Mission Critical Programme on “Accelerating development of a pro-competitive regulatory regime for telecommunications” emerged from our prioritisation exercise as such a high priority area. However, market action alone, however competitive the market framework, will not be able to address all of the barriers to citizen engagement in ICTs. Three areas in particular have been identified as Mission Critical: delivering universal community-based access to ICT and the skills to use it; development of e-Bangla content, and ICT in education. Recommended actions and milestones are set out in Appendix 1; below we describe how these flow from our recommended strategic approach of focusing first on building momentum; then on creating critical mass; and then on addressing the longer term transformations made possible by a critical mass of Internet users: − Universal community access to ICT

This is an area where significant progress is already in hand, under the aegis of the Bangladesh Telecentre Network. Existing telecenters are providing real benefit to their communities, and have been a real source of innovation in Bangladesh. The use of intermediaries ensures that anyone can benefit from access to ICT, regardless of literacy or language spoken, and other initiatives such as mobile ladies and use of wireless infrastructure are helping to extend access to more people.

However, we see significant scope for early gains by bringing government and donor organisation support behind the BTN initiatives in a more integrated way. The existing initiatives are largely run by NGOs, and government coordination and support could help ensure that there is more universal cover. Specific initiatives we recommend (see Appendix 1 for details) include: − Coordinated communication of the many different initiatives that are already in

place

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− Government engagement with NGO and private sector community access providers to help develop scalable and sustainable business models, including through: targeted financial support defining a core set of government e-services that can be delivered through

community centres, and developing models to bring a revenue stream to the centres for assisting citizens with these services (with long term funding based on the cost savings to government of moving from paper-based to electronic service delivery)

integrating the work and funding associated with the “eBangla Content” project outlined below with the community centres.

- E-Bangla There is currently not enough content available in the Bangla language to provide enough motivation for a large scale shift in the utilisation of ICT among the general public. A push for additional Bangla content would address this barrier to ICT uptake, and also improve the quality of the experience of ICT for existing users. Additional content hosted locally in Bangladesh will also have the advantage of reducing the demand for international bandwidth, by transferring content and services to local servers.1 We therefore recommend that an early priority in the “Building Momentum” phase should be to bring the range of existing initiatives together into a single coordinated strategy, with actions covering: - Fostering the development of new local content in the Bangla language - Digitising existing content (e.g. libraries, national archive, government content, etc.) - Translation of relevant content into Bangla language - Fostering technical standards to facilitate rapid development and diffusion of Bangla

content.

- ICT in education ICT in education is a means of ensuring that everyone has the basic ICT skills needed to take advantage of new technologies. Part of this is around providing ICT access and infrastructure for schools, but over the longer term it is also about using ICT to improve basic education. However, we recommend that plans in this area need to be pragmatic and realistic. While a number of leading eGovernments are now looking at how ICT can be integrated with all aspects of curriculum delivery through all parts of the education system – as a tool for improving educational outcomes across the aboard – we do not believe that this will be possible in Bangladesh within a five year period. Our aim is therefore to establish a critical mass of ICT enabled schools and teachers – by ensuring that by the end of the 5 year period of the roadmap, all secondary school children leave school with a basic 1 Source: “Regulatory Reform as a tool for Bridging the Digital Divide”, OECD 2004

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level of ICT user skills. However, to ensure that this work is undertaken in a way which sets the foundations for longer term transformation to the education system, we also recommend that early on in the Roadmap the Government of Bangladesh should publish its vision for ICT in education in the much longer term, going well beyond what is possible in the 5 year Roadmap period.

Delivery priorities: Transforming Public Services In parallel to this project to develop an ICT Roadmap for Bangladesh, the S1-ICT project has been developing a National eGovernment Strategy for Bangladesh. Based on our assessment of the Thrust Report prepared by the project, we believe it is on track to deliver a comprehensive future vision of how eGovernment strategy in Bangladesh should develop. It is less clear however on the roadmap for implementation. Based on our own assessment of the eGovernment challenges faced by Bangladesh and experience in other countries, our recommended phasing and prioritisation in each of the three areas of the recommended strategy is as follows: − Electronic services The S1-ICT Thrust report recommends a set of 36 “target services” to be prioritised by the Government of Bangladesh. Within each service area, our phasing recommendation is that Ministries should not seek initially to invest rapidly in end-to-end e-business, transactional capability for these services. Rather, they should prioritise low-technology, low-risk improvements that maximize citizen benefit by simplifying services at the front-end and making them available online (mobile as well as Internet). This prioritization should build on the “quick wins” exercise with ICT Focal Points currently being managed by the eGovernance Cell. − Service Delivery Channels As the priority electronic services are developed, it is essential that they are then delivered in a manner which is:

a) multi-channel – recognising in particular the importance of the mobile channel and local service centres as channels for e-services in Bangladesh, rather than simply relying on PC-based Internet access

b) citizen-centric – recognising that citizens want services provided in a joined up way, and that delivering services through integrated government-wide channels will both make this easier and also significantly reduce cost and risk. Rather than ask each Ministry to develop its own website etc, with its own transactional e-service capabilities, it will be both cheaper and better for citizens to develop channels on a cross-government basis. Many leading eGovernments, such as the UK and Australia, are currently in the process of dismantling the expensive e-channels infrastructure which they have built up over many years on a Ministry-by-Ministry basis, and replacing this with government-wide “One Stop Shops”. Bangladesh has the opportunity now to learn from this experience, and move directly to a one-stop-shop model. International experience suggests that the key to success is not to focus simply on integrating channels (such as through an all-of-government portal), but also to create an integrated business structure, based on small “franchise” teams which focus on aggregating content and services for specific customer groups (such as farmers, the elderly, parents,

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motorists etc). Governments currently adopting such a franchise-based business model include the UK, Australia, Hong Kong, Abu Dhabi and Croatia.

− eGovernment policies and standards2 The S1-ICT Roadmap sets out a wide range of standards and policies on eGovernment that in principle would be very helpful to the Government of Bangladesh as part of the planned eGovernment Interoperability Framework. In practice however, developing a full suite of policies and standards such as this is a lengthy and time-consuming process, which many leading eGovernments have not yet completed. Our recommendations is therefore that, in the “Building Momentum” phase, the Government of Bangladesh should focus on three aspects of the eGIF identified in the S1-ICT project which we believe will be absolutely critical for success: − establishing basic technical interoperability standards, based on open, international

standards and consultation with the ICT industry − developing a cross-government identity management strategy, to ensure that key

data sets such as identity and address are managed as a utility resource across the Government of Bangladesh. Without this, the government can expect to see major inefficiencies as it invests in eServices, and also significant limitations to its ability to join up services around citizen needs.

− Service channel interoperability (linked in particular to the delivery needs of the One Stop Shop initiatives described above)

Delivery priorities: Growing the ICT Sector Here, our recommendation is that priority is given in the Building Momentum phase to improved international marketing of Bangladesh’s existing strengths as a low-cost, high-skill partner for exporting, outsourcing and for Foreign Direct Investment. Priorities as the roadmap then develops should include improved industry/academia partnership (in order to better match the supply of skills from the university sector with the needs of the industry), and development of high growth clusters of ICT innovation around High-Tech Parks in every part of Bangladesh. Key tasks and milestones in each of these areas are described in Appendix 1.

Delivery priorities: Enabling the Market Ensuring a legal and regulatory regime which encourages growth of ICT adoption is essential for success of the roadmap. Some of the actions needed to take this forward are simple and can deliver early benefits: for example, completing the regulatory changes needed to remove legal barriers to e-commerce, and confirming continuation of the favourable tax regime for the ICT sector.

2 This third area of the S1-ICT draft National eGovernment Strategy is in fact titled, more broadly, “Enabling Environment”. Since many of the issues raised there (eg on governance and capacity building) are addressed elsewhere in our ICT Roadmap, we focus here on their standards and policies recommendations.

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The key challenge in order to establish real critical mass of users and longer term transformation, however, will be to ensure that the telecommunications market is fully opened up, giving new entrants a genuine level-playing field on which to compete with BTCL and a predictable and consistent regulatory framework within which to make investment decisions. Establishing a strong, pro-competitive regulatory framework for telecommunications is probably the single most important thing that Bangladesh can do to drive forward growth of the Information Society. There is a strong body of evidence (from organisations such as the OECD, World Bank, and ITU) showing that privatisation, liberalisation and effective competition regimes drive down prices, drive up choice and innovation, and result in significant levels of market growth. And that privatised, competitive telecommunications markets contribute more to GDP growth, to taxation revenues for government, and to employment levels than do public sector monopolies. Bangladesh has already made some significant steps towards establishing a pro-competitive market framework, notably with the establishment of BTRC as an independent regulator on 31 January 2002 , and with the “corporatisation” of BTCL during 2008. We believe, however, that this is an area where there is scope for Bangladesh to move more rapidly and aggressively. BTRC is currently working on its own strategy and action plan, and our recommendation is that that plan should be incorporated as part of the National ICT Roadmap / Action Plan for Bangladesh. Appendix 1 sets out key tasks and milestones in two mission critical areas: − Removing Legal Barriers to e-Commerce − Accelerating development of a pro-competitive regulatory regime for

telecommunications

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9. The National ICT Roadmap for Bangladesh Roadmap Overview The top-level view of our recommended ICT Roadmap is set out at Figure 9.1 below. This shows: - the five key workstreams in the roadmap - the 14 Mission Critical Programmes recommended across these workstreams - timelines, major milestones, and key dependencies for each Mission Critical

Programme, as they progress through the three strategic phases recommended in Section 8:

o Building momentum o Achieving critical mass o Transformation.

Figure 9.1: ICT Roadmap Timetable and Key Milestones

Leadership & Coordination

Empowering Citizens


Enabling the market

1.1 Universal access

1.2 e-Bangla


National ICT Roadmap for Bangladesh

1 Jan 2009 1 Jan 2010 1 Jan 2011 1 Jan 2012 1 Jan 2013


Launch of communications campaign

60% of Bangladeshis have ICT access

eBangla Partnership launched

eBangla National Strategy published All government web content now available in Bangla

Vision document published

New ICT curriculum launched

All secondary and higher secondary schools have Internet connectivity

ICT labs in all higher secondary schools

ICT labs in all secondary schools. ICT is mandatory part of curriculum


First release of One Stop Shop

2.2 One Stop Shop

2.3 Standards


All Ministries to have launched “quick win” e-services

Vision documents published for key sectors

2.1 eServices

All school leavers have

basic ICT skills





Launch rebranding of Bangladesh and international ICT investment campaign

Review of EEF completed

ICT tax holiday extended

Launch of industry/ academia skills partnership All universities part of broadband research and education network

Phase 1 Technology Parks launched at Chittagong and Khulna

3.3 Skills

3.4 ICT Clusters

Pilot Hi-Tech Park opened

First Digital Certificates issued by CA

Certified Authority established

Chief Information Officer appointed

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

ICT Finacial Taskforce report published

Banking best practice published

Technology Park Development Corporation established

Technology Parks operating in every Division of Bangladesh

Bangladeshis able to transact through credit card over internet and mobile phone

Chief Information Officer publishes quarterly reports on delivery of ICT Roadmap

Phase 1: Building Momentum Phase 2: Achieving Critical Mass Phase 3: Transformation

5.1 Cross-government

5.2 Within Ministries

New powers for ICT Focal Points

All Ministries have ICT Centres of Excellence

Computer Literacy compulsory for all new government jobs

100% of Bangladeshis have

ICT access

Second release of One Stop Shop, including mobile channel

Majority of citizen and SME dealings with government now take place via one of the One Stop Shop channels


International business surveys show Bangladesh recognised as a regional leader for ICT services and outsourcing

Timetable published for BTCL privatisation

BTRC publishes strategic roadmap for telecoms competion

BTRC publishes annual reports and updates of competition roadmap

GoB is a regional leader in e-service sophistication and citizen focus as benchmarked by the UN

3.2 Access to Finance

3.1 International Campaign

4.2 Competitive telecoms

4.1 Removing legal barriers

Bangladesh is a regional leader in availability, quality

and cost of broadband

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Roadmap Detail Appendix 1 to this report sets out further details on each of the 14 Mission Critical Programmes, covering: - the current position in Bangladesh - our future vision for progress in Bangladesh by the end of the five year period of the

Roadmap - delivery accountabilities for the Mission Critical Programme within the Government - the major tasks that need to be delivered, with their timetable - key milestones - dependencies with other Mission Critical Programmes. Measuring progress on the Roadmap We have developed a dashboard to assist the Government of Bangladesh in measuring the impact of its Roadmap implementation, by drawing together key data and statistics from authoritative international sources such as the World Bank and the United Nations into a performance benchmarking index for each of the main Roadmap areas. Details of the methodology used are set out in Appendix 2, but the top level results are shown below. Figure 9.2 gives an overall summary, showing how Bangladesh compares in each Roadmap area to the highest and lowest performing country in each Roadmap area; Figure 9.3 then gives the detailed results for each country. Figure 9.2: ICT Roadmap Dashboard - summary

0.0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1.0Empowering Citizens



Enabling the Market

Highest in benchmark group Lowest in benchmark group Bangladesh India

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Figure 9.3: ICT Roadmap Dashboard - detail

We recommend that this analysis should be updated on an annual basis by the Government Chief Information Officer, and used as a benchmark of the extent to which Bangladesh is improving relative to other countries in the region. Next Steps Further consultation will now be undertaken with stakeholders to test and refine the delivery plans set out in Appendix 1 and also to cost the plans in more detail, including through a major public consultation workshop during July. The results of this further consultation and analysis will be brought together into a final and revised version of the Roadmap, to be presented to the Government of Bangladesh by the end of July.

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PREPARED FOR


Ministry of Science and Information & Communication Technology (MOSICT) Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh

S2-ICT

Bangladesh ICT Roadmap

Appendix 1: Mission Critical Programme Roadmap Plans


[email protected]

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Workstream 1: Empowering citizens

1.1 Universal Community Based Access to ICT

Mission/Objective

To ensure that by 2011, all Bangladeshis have access to ICT and the skills to use them Current Position

Future Vision

Over a thousand (1055 as of February, 2008) telecentres in Bangladesh provide access to ICT and information on agriculture, employment, health and basic ICT utility service. However, this resource is fragmented, with no common messaging or common network support

By 2013, all Bangladeshi citizens and SMEs will have access within their community to ICT and the skills to use them (either through direct personal use, or facilitated by an intermediary).

A national partnership will have established an inclusive system of information and knowledge for all citizens through telecenters and other forms of public access, with special emphasis on marginalized groups and disability, which will be delivered using a rich combination of different business models, including

Entrepreneur / Value adding sector Voluntary sector Schools computer labs opened up to

the community out of school hours Government infrastructure ( e.g., many post offices having been enhanced as e-post/Cyber Post/e-service hub for government/public service (e.g. direct foreign remittance, money transfer, bill payment), local government institutions have big establishments, public libraries are underutilized)

Creation of information access through mobile telephone and community radio.

Accountabilities Lead Ministry: Ministry of Post & Telecommunication

Supporting Ministries/Agencies: Ministry of SICT, Ministry of Finance, BTN,

Ministry of LGRD, Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Food and Disaster Management, Ministry of Fisheries and

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Livestock, Ministry of Education

Tasks 1.1a Building on the current BTN structure, develop a national multi-stakeholder partnership to drive forward the universal community access to ICT programme

Multi-stakeholder partnership in place by January 2009 1.1b Define a minimum set of service standards requirement for a telecentre to become accredited under the National Telecentre Network 1.1c Develop and fund a “core offer” from government to potential telecentre operators (from the public, private and value adding sectors) including:

Access to common messaging and marketing, a common “quality mark” to be deployed by accredited telecentres alongside their own branding, and a collaborative communications effort

Access to best practice materials, training and support Ability to receive a service charge for every Bangladeshi that telecentre assists in

accessing specified GoB e-services Clear and simple process for achieving accreditation (including no need for approval

from BTRC) 1.1d Marketing and communication campaigning

Develop collaborative marketing and communications material (January 2008) Begin common messaging for participating telecentres (March 2009)

1.1e As part of the community access partnership, establish a Connectivity Task Force charged with:

Ensuring full visibility by the broadband industry of the emerging demand for connectivity by community-based ICT access venues

identifying solutions to any barriers faced by the industry in supplying that demand, including potential for establishing a Universal Access Fund with support from BTRC, the donor organizations and other stakeholders (see Mission Critical Programme 4.2 for details).

Milestones January 2009: Multi-stakeholder partnership in place March 2009: Collaborative communications material developed End 2010: 60% of Bangladeshis have access to ICT within their community End 2012: 100% of Bangladeshis have access to ICT within their community Dependency: Bangla Content, ICT in Education, Citizen

centric government, pro competitive regulatory environment

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1.2 e-Bangla

Mission/Objective To ensure that Bangladeshis are easily able to produce and upload digital content in Bangla and that they are motivated and empowered to do so. Current Position

Future Vision

Currently very little Bangla language content is available on the web, which represents a major barrier to growth of the Internet user base in Bangladesh. Technical Standards and interface issues have inhibited the easy production of web based Bangla content. Most government websites are in English only and there are very low levels of community-driven production of Bangla content.

A wealth of new eBangla content has helped to motivate high levels of Internet use across Bangladesh society. In particular:

All government web content is available in Bangla

A wide range of cultural and educational content are digitised

Local communities are producing rich and interactive localised and relevant Bangla content

Content is available through various channels, including mobile phone and community radio

Accountabilities Lead Ministry: Ministry of SICT (BCC)

Supporting Ministries/Agencies: Bangla Academy, eGovernance Cell Tasks 1.2a Introduce and sensitise stakeholders to unicode system 1.2b Establish an e-Bangla Partnership with all relevant stakeholders and jointly develop and publish an e-Bangla National Strategy, to include:

Migration of all current government web content into dual language Creation of an “e-Bangla Library” - a repository of e-Bangla content established

with participation of all tertiary educational institutions and research institutions and non-government initiatives

Incentives to create low-cost, affordable Bangla processing tools, software to develop searchable text and voice content with special attention to disability and specials needs

Research on Bangla language processing including Bangla text to speech, OCR and other software for ensuring universal use of Bangla language in all platforms

Stimulation of local community content development through: A National e-Bangla Awards programme Best practice guidance on local content stimulation by telecentres grants for local language content development

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Milestones

E-Bangla Partnership launched (March 2009) E-Bangla National Strategy published (June 2009) All government web content available in digital bangla by September, 2009

Dependency: Universal community access to ICT

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Mission/Objective

To ensure that, by 2013, all Bangladeshi secondary school children have access to ICT – not only for the development of basic ICT skills, but also to use ICTs for e-Learning Current Position

Future Vision

Some schools in urban area have computers but they tend not to be well supported with teacher training and digital curriculum materials

By 2013, all secondary and higher secondary educational schools will have an ICT Lab with access to all the curriculum materials, teacher trained and support needed to ensure that:

All children are confident users of ICT and internet

All teachers are able to use ICT for effective teaching

Accountabilities

Lead Ministry: Ministry of Education, Ministry of Primary and Mass Education

Supporting Ministries/Agencies: University Grants Commission

Tasks 1.3a Publish long-term vision for ICT-enabled transformation of education by [April, 2008] 1.3b Redesign and launch new ICT literacy curriculum for secondary and higher secondary schools 1.3c Roll out of kit and connectivity in all secondary and higher secondary schools and development of business model which enables ICT labs to serve the community after school hours 1.3d Launch Model School for ICT Learning Programme for each UP 1.3eComprehensive Teacher Training programme in collaboration with global ICT companies and other institutions 1.3 f Launch ICT acquisition campaign for teachers at subsidized price 1.3 g Launch multimedia and online educational content development programme Milestones

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February 2009: publish long-term vision for ICT-enabled transformation of education

January 2010: New curriculum introduced

December 2009: Teacher training on how to use ICT for e-Learning to begin

December 2009: Launch first model school ICT Learning

December, 2010: All secondary and higher secondary schools to have internet connectivity

September, 2011: All higher secondary schools equipped with full fledged ICT Labs;

all high school teachers educated on how to use ICT for e-Learning

January, 2013: All secondary schools are equipped with full fledged ICT labs; all secondary school teachers educated on how to use ICT for e-Learning

January, 2013: ICT is mandatory subject in curriculum both in secondary and higher

secondary Dependency:

Universal community access to the Internet

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Workstream 2: Transforming Public Services

2.1 Citizen-centric eServices

Mission/Objective By 2013, Bangladesh is one of the regional leaders for e-service maturity, and for the citizen focus of those e-services, as measured by UN benchmarks. Current Position Future Vision The e-Service maturity of the Government of Bangladesh is currently very low. The annual eGovernment Benchmarking surveys undertaken by the United Nations rank Bangladesh very low, both globally and compared to other countries in the region. A major survey of 27 departments and agencies undertaken in 2008 by the S1-ICT Emtap Project found no examples of transactional online services, and with very few services ready to be quickly provided online.

High levels of citizen take-up for GoB e-services (through a rich mix of channels – including mobile phones, web, kiosks and service centres) is contributing to economic development, poverty reduction, and better and more transparent governance.

Accountabilities Lead Ministry: Chief Advisors Office Supporting Ministries/Agencies: MoSICT, BCC, all Ministries with service

delivery responsibilities Tasks 2.1a Publish long-term visions for ICT-enabled transformation of public services in priority areas - Education, Health, Agriculture and Local Government (by February 2009) 2.1b Every Ministry to publish plans for its priority e-service investments, drawing on the “quick wins” exercise being coordinated by the eGovernance Cell, the list of 36 target services priorities by the National eGovernment Strategy developed through the S1-ICT Emtap project, and e-service priorities identified by the Bangladesh Better Business Forum in their review of the Bangladesh ICT Policy. These plans should:

Prioritise low-technology, low-risk improvements that maximize citizen benefit through joining up services at the front-end

Set targets for citizen take-up of the service, underpinned by clear plans for encouraging take-up

Include plans for integration with government-wide service delivery channels (see Workstream 2.2) and compliance with government-wide standards (see Workstream 2.3)

Plan for back-end automation of the full transaction over the longer term Give special emphasis on agriculture, needs of SMEs, disaster

management and climate change, and health care. Milestones

February 2009: Transformation Vision documents published for key sectors March 2009: Each Ministry publishes plans for its e-service investments December 2009: Each Ministry to have launched at least one “quick win” e-service

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Dependency: National e-Government Strategy 2.2: Citizen-centric multi-channel service delivery system 2.3 eGovernment Standards and Policies

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2.2 Development of a citizen-centric, multi-channel service delivery system for the Government of Bangladesh

Mission/Objective

To deliver a citizen-centric, multi channel one stop shop for government that will ensure that the services prioritized for e-enablement (see S1-ICT) are delivered in a way that is designed around user needs and achieve high levels of uptake and user satisfaction Current Position Future Vision There is an existing initiative for a national portal, which would benefit greatly from being made citizen-centric. Some ministries and agencies have websites, but these tend to be fragmented, and are not designed around citizen needs. Many telecentre initiatives are under way, but there is no strategy or business model in place for how these could be used as an integrated front-end for e-services, serving as an intermediated channel for all Ministries.

A single, citizen-centric “one stop shop” service that:

Presents the information and services that citizens want in a way that is easy to understand and designed for them

Responds to the majority of citizen needs directly rather than requiring them to go to channels managed by individual Ministries or agencies

Operates in an integrated way across multiple channels, leveraging in particular:

Bangladesh’s high level of mobile phone penetration

The national network of telecentres being developed in Workstream 1.1

Achieves high levels of customer satisfaction and high levels of uptake

Avoids duplication of ICT expenditure by Ministries.

Accountabilities Lead Ministry: Chief Advisors Office Supporting Ministries/Agencies: MoSICT, BCC, all Ministries with service

delivery responsibilities Tasks

Develop detailed strategy and plan for the citizen-centric government One Stop Shop– taking into account the outputs from S1-ICT, and incorporating international best practice on successful national One Stop Shops (by March 2009)

Establish the governance and business structure for the One Stop Shop development and delivery (by June 2009)

Define the business model for telecentre “intermediation” of the services available through the One Stop Portal

Customer research to ensure the portal responds to citizen needs and will achieve high levels of uptake

Technology delivery

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Content delivery Marketing and communication activity to raise awareness of the One Stop Shop Develop business case for enhancement of One Stop Shop with a call centre

operation (ie launch of a “311 service” for the GoB) Milestones

Decision taken to develop a citizen-centric one stop shop for citizens by January 2009 – using the services prioritized through S1-ICT and an internationally proven business model

Roadmap for citizen-centric one stop shop developed by March 2008 First release of citizen-centric one stop shop (an web-based service developed using

the existing technology supporting the current government portal) delivered by December 2009

Second release of citizen-centric one stop portal, including content and technology optimization for mobile phone users of the service, delivered by December 2010

By end 2013: the majority of information and transactional interactions between citizens and the government now take place via one of the One Stop Shop channels.

Dependency: National e-Government Strategy 2.1: e-Services 2.3 eGovernment Standards and Policies 1.1 Universal community access

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2.3 eGovernment Standards and Policies

Mission/Objective To develop a comprehensive eGovernment Interoperability Framework for the Government of Bangladesh. Current Position Future Vision There is a commitment to develop an eGIF for the GoB, but this is not yet in place. Without it, there is a high risk that planned e-service investments by different Ministries will be technically incompatible, making it costly to join them up through integrated service delivery channels such as the government portal. There is also a high risk of duplication of investments.

The Bangladesh eGovernment Interoperability Framework has been fully adopted by all central and local government organisations and their ICT suppliers. It ensures that e-services can be integrated efficiently and effectively around citizen needs and that there is no waste or duplication in the Government’s ICT investments.

Accountabilities Lead Ministry: Chief Advisors Office Supporting Ministries/Agencies: MoSICT, BCC Tasks

Launch public consultation of first version of eGIF in autumn 2008, with the resulting Version 1.0 published in January 2009

Do not aim for this to cover all of the areas set out in the S1-ICT report. Focus instead on three key areas

o Technical interoperability o Service channel interoperability (linked in particular to the delivery needs of the One

Stop Shop initiatives being taken forward in ICT Roadmap Workstream 2.2) o Identity Management and Authentication

Annual updates and expansions of the eGIF, which progressively address the other areas identified in the S1-ICT report.

Training and communication programme to ensure that officials and industry understand eGIF and its benefits

Milestones January 2009: v1.0 of Bangladesh eGovernment Interoperability Framework January 2010: v2.0 of Bangladesh eGovernment Interoperability Framework January 2011: v3.0 of Bangladesh eGovernment Interoperability Framework January 2012: v4.0 of Bangladesh eGovernment Interoperability Framework January 2013: v5.0 of Bangladesh eGovernment Interoperability Framework

Dependency: National e-Government Strategy

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Workstream 3: Growing the ICT Sector

3.1: International ICT trade and investment Campaign

Mission/Objective To develop a globally-recognised brand for Bangladesh as a centre for ICT investment, outsourcing and exports, which helps the Bangladesh ICT sector to grow its levels of exports, turnover and Foreign Direct Investment by at least 50% each year between now and 2013. Current Position

Future Vision

As of now, there are close to 500 software and ITES companies in Bangladesh, employing over 12,000 ICT professionals. The size of the IT market excluding telecom in Bangladesh is estimated to be US$300 million in total; of which the software and ITES industries share 39% (US$117 million). The software/ITES sector is growing particularly rapidly – with exports up by over 620% in the last 5 years to $26million US$. Despite this increasing success, Bangladesh is suffering from a lack of international awareness of its benefits as a outsourcing location and ICT trading partner, which include: - Close proximity to fastest growing economies,

Far East Asia and Middle East - Large pool of highly-skilled young adult

resources - English language - A very price-competitive labour force - Significant tax and VAT exemptions provided

to IT industry The ICT Business Promotion Council, formed under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Commerce, has the mandate to promote the ICT sector abroad, but activities so far have tended to be piecemeal rather than strategic, with limited government involvement and backing.

Bangladesh is recognized internationally as a source of high quality and highly price-competitive ICT products, services and outsourcing. This recognition is underpinned by a strong national brand and a highly effective international communications campaign developed and delivered in partnership between the GoB and industry. The international recognition of Bangladesh as a source of high quality ICT products leads to high levels of investment, and significant growth of the ICT Industry in Bangladesh.

Accountabilities Lead Ministry: Ministry of Commerce

Supporting Ministries/Agencies: Ministry of SICT, CAO, Ministry of Post &

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Telecommunication, Chambers, BASIS, BCS

Tasks 3.1a Refocus the ICT Business Promotion Council (BPC) as a public private partnership to drive growth of the ICT sector, with sufficient funding and resources to develop and deliver an effective marketing, communications and outreach campaign 3.1b ICT Business Promotion Council to develop and publish its strategy for delivering a brand-led campaign for the Bangladesh ICT sector by February 2009, including:

Brand values and core campaign messages - these should: − Build on Bangladesh’s current strengths as identified above and described

in more detail in our ICT Sector Analysis − Not “overclaim” – that is, they should recognise the current weakness in

Bangladesh’s current ICT environment, and show how these are being aggressively addressed by the government through the ICT Roadmap

− Be thoroughly researched: to get this right, the branding and communications should not be invented by a committee, but developed through a professionally managed process of engagement and research with existing and potential investors/customers for the Bangladeshi ICT sector

Audience segmentation: further work on this will be needed as part of the ICT

BPC’s strategy development process, but based on our research and consultation through the Roadmap process, we recommend that there should be four core audiences for the communications campaign: − Overseas businesses wishing to outsource services: because of limited

capacity in Bangladesh for large-scale outsourcing operations, there would be benefit in targeting the ITEC awareness campaign initially at SMEs, while continuing to improve Bangladesh’s capacity. When local capacity is large enough to support large-scale operations, the awareness campaign can be expanded to include large companies.

− Potential export customers: focus in particular on developing partnerships with companies in other countries as channels to market, rather than seeking direct export sales (building on the success of the Basis/Danida matchmaking service between Bangladeshi and Danish ICT companies)

− Potential inward investors: the campaign should set out the benefits to Multi-National Companies of locating future investments in Bangladesh, including through interaction with the regional Head Quarters of the target companies, and leveraging Corporate Social Responsibility activities of eg Microsoft, Intel as references.

− Bangladeshi ICT professionals working abroad: explaining the growth of opportunities for them in the domestic sector now, and their ability to contribute to a key thrust area for Bangladeshi national development.

Delivery mechanisms - including:

− Expanding the role of Bangladesh embassies into a more formally-managed marketing/lead generating service for the Bangladesh ICT sector, with sales

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targets and benchmarks linked to the overall ICT Business Promotion Council strategy, and staff evaluated against these targets

− Partnerships with foreign chambers/trade bodies − A programme of trade fairs and inward and outward missions, with

government funding to support this.

Milestones

Rebranding of Bangladesh – launched in June 2009 Dependency:

ICT in education Increasing the supply of specialist ICT skills and better matching supply to demand ICT cluster development Access to finance for ICT sector Pro-competitive regulatory framework Removing legal barriers to e-commerce and e-government

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3.2. Access to finance for the ICT Sector

Mission/Objective To ensure that the growth of the ICT sector in Bangladesh is not constrained by lack of access to debt and equity financing. Current Position

Future Vision

Venture capital firms are almost non-existent in Bangladesh, let alone technology industry oriented VCs. The only general source of investment funding for the ICT industry is from the Bangladesh Bank under the scheme commonly known as EEF (Equity Entrepreneurship Fund). fund where 7 billion taka is allocated. But management problems, coupled with the fact that the fund is for Agriculture as well as the IT industry (although IT has been separated in the last Budget), have meant that the EEF has had limited impact. Moreover, there is also not an effective market in the provision of commercial loans to companies in the ICT sector, with most banks having little experience or risk management frameworks for assessing/evaluating a lending/financing proposal from knowledge-based industries such as the ICT sector. The Government of Bangladesh in its 2008-09 budget, has extended the corporate tax holiday for software and ITES sector by a further 3 years, but with no commitment beyond that.

The EEF has become a vibrant and effective source of VC funding for ICT businesses. Commercial banks understand the needs of the sector thoroughly, and it has become one of their highest valued sectors.

Accountabilities Lead Ministry: Ministry of Finance

Supporting Ministries/Agencies: Ministry of SICT, Bangladesh Bank

(representing all schedule banks), Ministry of Commerce (other financial institutions, e.g. leasing firms, general insurance)

Tasks 3.2a Undertake a detailed review of the operations and governance of the Equity

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Entrepreneurship Fund, to ensure that it is effectively geared to the needs of the ICT sector (to be completed by November 2009). The scope of the review should include:

The possibility for the fund to be increased through matching funding from donor organisations, and/or through partnerships with foreign venture capital funds

Improvements to risk assessment and speed of decision-making, including through involvement of private sector organisations such as BASIS in management of the scheme (in the way that such organisations are already involved in managing related government schemes for the sector such as SME incubators)

3.2b Establish an ICT Finance Taskforce, comprising Bangladesh Bank, IBPC, ICT Task Force (CAO) to address the particular issue of loan financing, publishing its reports and recommendations by April 2009. The task force should:

Review current lending and risk-assessment practices applied to the ICT sector by commercial banks in Bangladesh

Compare these with international practices in selected benchmark countries Identify best practices for commercial adoption by the banking sector, and any

regulatory changes that may be needed to enable these. 3.2c Commit to extending the corporate tax holiday for software and ITES sector for at least the five years of the ICT Roadmap Milestones

Establishment of ICT Financial Taskforce by April 2009 Identify best practice for commercial adoption by the banking sector by September

2009 Review of EEF completed, November 2009 1 April 2011: Tax holiday extended

Dependency:

None

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3.3: Meeting the Skill Needs of the ICT Sector

Mission/Objective To ensure that Bangladesh is seen as a global source of high level ICT skills and that the ICT sector has a ready supply of skills that meet its needs as the sector grows Current Position

Future Vision

Bangladesh currently produces roughly 2500-4000 IT graduates each year. This is insufficient to meet growing demand for IT employees. Additionally, the academic curriculum that most graduates acquire is not effectively geared to industry needs.

Bangladesh has a global reputation for high-level ICT skills; close partnership and dialogue between the ICT sector and the Higher Education system means that the supply of ICT skills is well matched to industry’s changing needs as ICT technologies and markets develop.

Accountabilities

Lead Ministry: Ministry of Education

Supporting Ministries/Agencies: Ministry of SICT, UGC, National Skills Development Council

Tasks 3.3a Establish a new organisation co-funded by government, ICT industry and the Donor community with a mandate to map out industry skill needs and engage in dialogue with academia to ensure that these are built into ICT curriculum on an ongoing basis (“e-Skills Partnership for Bangladesh”). This should build on the ICT Professional Skill Assessment and Enhancement (IPSAEP) project of the National Skills Development Council, which has recently been accepted by the government, but with a broader remit. 3.3b Identify (through dialogue described above) any staffing or infrastructure gaps in universities/Polytechnics needed to deliver industry’s skill needs and prioritise these in funding decisions for 2010 awards 3.3c Establish a broadband research and education network for all public and private universities Milestones

March 2009: Launch e-Skills partnership program between industry and academia September 2009: Staffing and infrastructure gaps identified, plan in place to address

them for the 2010 awards June 2009: Establish a broadband network between all universities

Dependency:

None

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3.4: ICT cluster development

Mission/Objective To develop clusters of high-growth ICT companies based around hi-tech parks in each division of Bangladesh by 2013 (or federal states, if they are so upgraded by that time) Current Position

Future Vision

Many countries (for example, South Korea, India, Vietnam), have successfully used public private partnership investment to develop clusters of ICT businesses in specific geographical locations – and there is significant evidence that the multiplier effects associated with such cluster development lead to higher levels of sector growth. In Bangladesh, however, there has been limited success in this area. At present, there is some clustering of the ICT sector in and around Dhaka, but without the infrastructural support and close industry/academic links seen in most successful clusters. Government intervention has been limited:

The Ministry of SICT has 47 acres of land at Mohakhali C/A out of which 17 acres of land is proposed to be allotted for the establishment of an ICT village under PPP

Currently there is one ICT incubator at Kawran Bazar (where BASIS is also located) to provide assistance in infrastructure and logistics for start up and small ICT companies.

Technology parks are flourishing in every part of Bangladesh. They have close links with nearby Higher Education institutions, and are well-served by high-speed broadband and wireless connectivity. ICT firms locating to the parks also benefit from preferential focus in broader support schemes for the ICT sector, such as the Equity Entrepreneurship Fund.

Accountabilities Lead Ministry: Ministry of SICT

Supporting Ministries/Agencies: CAO, Ministry of Establishment, Ministry of

Land, Ministry of Public Works & Housing, Ministry of Post & Telecommunication, Ministry of Commerce, BASIS, BCS, ISPAB

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Tasks

3.4a Establish (by April 2009) a Hi-Tech Park Development Partnership, between IBPC, MoSICT and Chambers (CCCI, FBCCI), and the relevant City Corporations, to establish and promote ICT incubators. The aims of the partnership should be to:

Identify GoB funding and assets which can be contributed to the PPP (including allocation of land, such as the MoSICT owned land in Mokakhali, and of building space – such as spare space in the BCC building at Agargaon, Dhaka which could be converted into an ICT Incubator)

Agree matched funding from donor organisations Establish by March 2010, on a PPP basis, a Hi Tech Park Development

Corporation charged with building and managing the hi-tech parks. The private sector partner who would manage this Corporation would be selected on competitive tender, based on a an assessment of a) the best value for money offered in the use of the public resources being made available and b) the innovation and entrepreneurship shown in bringing in additional resources and revenue streams.

Milestones

Pilot Hi-tech Park launched by BCC: at Mokakhali (January 2009) Hi-tech Park Development Corporation established (April 2009) Phase 1 Hi-tech Parks launched Chittagong and Khulna (January 2011) Hi-tech Parks operating in every division of Bangladesh (2013)

Dependency:

Meeting the Skill Needs of the ICT Sector (in order to ensure effective links with Higher Education)

A pro-competitive regulatory environment for telecoms (in order to assure availability of affordable broadband infrastructure)

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Workstream 4: Enabling the market

4.1: Removing Legal Barriers to e-Commerce

Mission/Objective To ensure that all remaining legal barriers to doing business electronically in Bangladesh are removed and that the necessary business changes are put in place in the public and private sectors to take advantage of the new legal opportunities Current Position

Future Vision

The 2006 ICT Act makes most of the necessary provisions to ensure that electronic ways of doing business (such as electronic documents, electronic signatures and electronic payment systems) are legally valid. However, some steps are still needed to finalise the regulatory regime envisaged by the Act. Moreover, ministries and the banks have not yet made the business process changes that are needed to make a practical reality of the possibilities opened up by these legal changes.

All Bangladeshi citizens and businesses:

- Have easy access to electronic payment facilities for e-commerce including mobile payments

- Are able to use email

communications with all government agencies and ministries, and to digitally sign electronic communications for any government transaction where a high level of authentication is essential

Accountabilities Lead Ministry: Ministry of SICT

Supporting Ministries/Agencies: BCC, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Law,

Ministry of Commerce, Bangladesh Bank

Tasks 4.1a Implement ICT Act 2006 regulations in order to establish the Certification Authority (CA)

- Frame rules - Agree in principle with the Bangladesh Bank that it should take on the role of CA,

and identify the staff and resource requirements needed - Establish the organisation - Initiate Operation - Issue license

4.1b Frame rules & regulation in coordination with Ministry of Finance to enable mobile payment gateway

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4.1c Establish Payment Gateway in Bangladesh Bank. Ministry of Finance and Bangladesh Bank enact and implement the action 4.1d Establish e-Payment Working Committee with all scheduled banks, both NCB and private Milestones

February 2009: Certified Authority (CA) established

June 2009: First Digital Certificate issues by CA

June 2009: Frame rules and regulation in place to enable mobile payment gateway

September 2009: Bangladeshis, especially SMEs are able to transact through credit card over the internet and/or mobile phone

Dependency:

None

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Workstream 4: Enabling the market

4.2: Accelerating development of a pro-competitive regulatory regime for telecommunications

Mission/Objective To ensure that Bangladesh is a regional leader in availability, quality and cost of broadband infrastructure and services Current Position Future Vision The fixed telephony market in Bangladesh is dominated by BTCL, a state-owned enterprise (formerly BTTB), which has almost three-quarters of the subscriber base. The country’s fixed line penetration is low, with more than 90% of subscribers being in urban areas. The mobile telephony market is very different. Driven largely by an explosion of competition after the liberalising Telecommunications Act of 2001, Bangladesh has seen the strongest growth rates in the mobile sector in the region, with over 1 in 3 Bangladeshis now having telephone access. Internet use is low – and growing much less rapidly than in countries of similar size and income.

By 2013, Bangladesh has one of the highest levels of Internet use in the region, driven by one of the lowest costs of Internet access. This has been achieved through aggressive promotion of liberalised, pro-competitive telecommunications regulatory regime.

Accountabilities Lead Ministry: MoPT Supporting Ministries/Agencies: BTRC

Tasks 5.1a The Government of Bangladesh should commit to full privatization of

BTCL. MoPT should publish a clear roadmap for selling 100% of the government’s stake in BTCL on an aggressive timescale – we recommend within 18-24 months. International evidence suggests that privatization (coupled with a strong competition regime – see Task 5.1b below) will be a major factor in driving down prices, increasing choice and innovation, and result in significant levels of market growth. Privatised, competitive telecommunications markets contribute more to GDP growth, to taxation revenues for government, and to employment levels than do public sector monopolies.

5.1b BTRC should publish a clear strategy for development of the Bangladesh

telecoms market. A significant amount of action is already in hand to promote competition in the Bangladesh market, but stakeholder feedback suggests that industry would benefit from a much clearer statement from the regulator about: its strategy for market development, key milestones, and the principles it will apply.

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Such a statement would give a clearer basis for industry to develop investment plans. We recommend that the strategy should cover in particular:

Driving forward a transparent and cost-based interconnection regime, coupled with very aggressive regulatory action to ensure a level playing field between BTCL’s retail business and its competitors

Increasing competition on the international gateway, ideally by licensing at least one additional competitor in this space and by requiring the operators to operate as wholesalers of bandwidth without their own retail businesses

Moving to a converged licensing regime – that is, where licences permit the provision of any service enabled by a specific technology, rather than the current situation where licences are focused around specific services.

Moving to class licensing for ISPs and mobile operators, to reduce costs of entry

Introduction of a spectrum trading regime – to enable scarce spectrum resources to be allocated flexibly to those best able to exploit them.

Establishment of a Universal Service Fund to assist with broadband infrastructure roll-out in rural areas, following extensive consultation with the industry, donor organizations and other stakeholders to agree a funding model which promotes universal access without deterring new entrants or damaging the business case for broadband investments.

5.1c MoPT should commission an Independent Organisational Review of

BTRC aimed at strengthening its capacity. BTRC has been widely acclaimed for its work so far, but stakeholder feedback suggests that more professional economists, lawyers and telecoms experts are needed within the organisation in order to drive forward an aggressive programme of the type outlined above and to respond in a rapid way to market and technological developments. A rapid review of the organisational capabilities required should be undertaken, drawing on international experience, with a view to a) increasing the size of BTRC and b) giving BTRC more flexibility to set pay and grading structures separately from the standard government structures

Milestones

March 2009: MoPT publishes timetable for full privatization of BTCL April 2009: BTRC publishes 5 year roadmap for telecommunications

privatization, liberalization and competition. August 2009: Organisational Review of BTRC completed. 2010-2013: BTRC publishes annual updates of the 5 year roadmap

Dependency: None

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Workstream 5: Leadership and Governance 5.1 Establishing effective cross-government leadership and governance

of the ICT Roadmap

Mission/Objective

To ensure that: a) accountability for delivering all aspects of the roadmap and associated elements is clear to all stakeholders b) effective structures and processes are in place to ensure successful delivery. Current Position Future Vision Previous efforts to improve Bangladesh’s ICT performance – notably the 2002 IT Policy – have been hindered by weaknesses in moving from policy to actions capable of delivering sustainable change. The recent relaunch of the ICT Taskforce provides a relevant top-level governance structure for driving the ICT Roadmap, but additional changes are needed to make the Taskforce more effective.

By 2013, all elements of the ICT Roadmap have been successfully delivered. At a cross-government level, the ICT Taskforce has taken responsibility for “owning” the ICT Roadmap – and has successfully monitored its delivery, ensuring that any key risks and potential blockages along the way were addressed effectively. In doing so, it has been supported by a full-time “Government Chief Information Officer” reporting directly to Taskforce and the Chief Advisor, and by effective governance structures and processes both at government-wide level and within each Ministry.

Accountabilities Lead Ministry: Chief Advisor’s Office and MoSICT Supporting Ministries/Agencies: SICT, BCC, BTRC, MoP

Tasks 5.1a By January 2009, establish formal government-wide governance structures, including:

ICT Taskforce taking formal responsibility for owning the ICT Roadmap Appointment of a full time “Government Chief Information Officer” reporting to the

taskforce and to the Chief Advisor. (This person should have board-level experience of driving change, in both the public and private sectors, and be empowered to act as the central focus of leadership across government on ICT issues.)

Establishment of a small ICT Roadmap Programme Management Office (3-4 people, with professional programme management and change management skills, remunerated at market rates) to support the Government Chief Information Officer, charged with: o Identifying a Senior Responsible Officer (SRO) for each Mission Critical

Programme in the ICT Roadmap – that is, a senior official in a lead Ministry with personal responsibility for delivering each project and its intended benefits

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o Working with the SRO for each Mission Critical Programme to establish detailed delivery plans / trajectories in order to track progress against programme objectives

o Monitoring progress against the delivery trajectories and challenging the relevant Ministries when they fall behind

o Establishing a programme of regular external healthchecks of Mission Critical Programme (at least every 6 months)

o Improving ICT data availability in Bangladesh, and monitoring and enhancing over time the ICT Roadmap Performance Dashboard developed in this report.

o Working with the donor organisations to ensure that they understand and buy-in to the Roadmap, and will align their funding strategies behind it in an integrated, cross-donor manner

5.1b By January 2009, establish formal public reporting processes to monitor progress on delivery of the ICT Roadmap:

Publish the Government of Bangladesh’s ICT Roadmap Implementation Plan (based on this plan prepared by Gov3, but signed off and owned by the ICT Task Force)

As part of this, publish the names of the lead officials responsible for each workstream in the ICT Roadmap, along with their email addresses

Commit to web-based public reporting by the Government Chief Information Officer of implementation progress on a quarterly basis.

5.1c By February 2009, clarify the roles of the key organisations involved in ICT policy, to reduce overlap and confusion in both the actual activities and the formal remits of a number of the key bodies. In particular, introduce a much clearer distinction between:

Overall strategic ownership, coordination and monitoring of the ICT Roadmap (which should be done by the ICT Roadmap PMO, including the current eGovernance Cell, reporting to the Government Chief Information Officer and the ICT Taskforce)

Delivery support and capability building for Ministries (which should be done by the BCC, with a refocused agenda more similar to India’s National Institute for Smart Governance).

Milestones

Government Chief Information Officer appointed (January 2009) First quarterly report on ICT Roadmap implementation published by the

Government Chief Information Officer (April 2009), with ongoing quarterly reports thereafter.

Dependency:

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Workstream 5: Leadership and Governance 5.2 Improving ICT strategy and delivery within Ministries

Mission/Objective

To ensure that individual Ministries have effective governance structures and processes in place, alongside with all the necessary skills, to ensure successful delivery.

Current Position Future Vision Previous efforts to improve Bangladesh’s ICT performance – notably the 2002 IT Policy – have been hindered by weaknesses in moving from policy to actions capable of delivering sustainable change. Within Ministries, the ICT Focal Points provide a good starting point for effective ICT governance, but their role could be strengthened, and additional support is needed.

By 2013, all Ministries are effectively harnessing ICT to deliver their policy objectives, and are joining up effectively with other Ministries to deliver services in an integrated manner focused on citizens’ needs.

Accountabilities Lead Ministry: Chief Advisor’s Office and MoSICT Supporting Ministries/Agencies: SICT, BCC, BTRC, MoP

Tasks 5.2a Improve ICT governance within Ministries, by:

Defining the role, specification, and privileges of ICT Focal Points, including giving them budgetary power over ICT expenditure in their ministries, to ensure that these roles are consistently seen as senior and empowered ones within Ministries (by February 2009)

Creating close reporting links between the Focal Points and the Government CIO.

Developing an ICT Centre of Excellence in each ministry, reporting to the ICT Focal Point. These should be responsible for planning, monitoring and evaluation mechanisms covering all ICT projects across the Ministry, and ICT training and capacity building within the Ministry.

5.2b Address internal ICT skills shortages within the government by:

Enabling the ICT Centres of Excellence to recruit staff at market rates (from April 2009)

Making “computer literacy” (basic ICT user skills) a compulsory part of all examinations for Government jobs

Milestones New powers for ICT Focal Points defined (February 2009) First Centres of Excellence established by April 2009 All Ministries to have Centres of Excellence by April 2010 Making “computer literacy” (basic ICT user skills) a compulsory part of all

examinations for Government jobs (from January 2011) Dependency: 5.1 Cross government leadership and

governance

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PREPARED FOR


Ministry of Science and Information & Communication Technology (MOSICT) Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh

S2-ICT

Bangladesh ICT Roadmap

Appendix 2: Benchmarking the ICT Roadmap


[email protected]

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Appendix 2: Benchmarking the ICT Roadmap Methodology

The four indices used in our recommended ICT Roadmap Performance Dashboard (the Citizen Empowerment Index, the Transforming Public Services Index, the ICT Sector Index; and the Market Enablement Index) were constructed as follows.

A list of key indicators of national performance in each area of the ICT Roadmap was compiled based on a review of official data sources and authoritative published international benchmarks. (Details of the indicators selected and their sources are given in the section below).

Each of the variables were then scaled to a 0 to 1 range by first subtracting the minimum of each variable's range thereby creating a new scaled value and then dividing this resulting value by the maximum of scaled variable's range. Transforming all variables in such a fashion allows the creation of summary measures as each variable is comparable and on an identical scale. Average scaled values were therefore created to summarize the average scaled access index, the average scaled confidence index, and the average scaled motivational index. No weighting was applied – that is, each of the variables was given equal weigh within the index. Both the individual scaled values as well as the summary values permit one to rank the various nations on the items of interest.

In the case of the Citizen Empowerment Index, this was created from an average of three sub-indices (each of which was created through the process described above). The three sub indices covered the three key barriers to engagement of Bangladeshis with ICT which have been identified in the Roadmap: access, confidence, and motivation. Data Sources

The table below gives details of the data sets used in constructing the ICT Roadmap Performance Dashboard, and their sources. Unless otherwise indicated, the data refers to 2006, or the latest available official figures for countries where 2007 data is unavailable. The data modelling and statistical analysis of these data is the responsibility of gov3 ltd, not of the data providing organisations.

# Core Index Sub-

indices Indicators Data Source

1 Citizen Empowerment

Access index

Internet penetration (per 100 people)

World Bank (World Development Indicators)

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2 Broadband penetration

(Broadband per 100 users)


3 PC Penetration (PC per 100 users)


4 Telecomes penetration (fixed line per 100 user )


5 Telecomes penetration (mobile phone subscriber per 100 user )


6 Quality of connectivity (international internet Bandwidth (Mbps)


7 Internet cost (price basket for internet in USD$)


8 Internet affordability (internet cost as a ratio of per capita monthly income)


Confidence Index

Literacy rate, adult total (per 100 people)

United Nations (Human Development Index)

Gross enrolment (primary, secondary and tertiary education per 100 people)

United Nations (Human Development Index)

Trusted ecommerce infrastructure (secure internet servers in numbers)


Motivation Index

Internet Users (internet users per 100 people)


Availability of local content (IP allocation based on hosted domains per 1000 of population.)

http://www.whois.sc/internet-statistics/country-ip-counts.html

Public Service Transformation

Availability of online public sector content and services (UN Web measurement Index)

United Nations ( the UN eGovernment Survey 2008)

Quality of public sector online content and

United Nations ( the UN eGovernment Survey

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services (UN e-Participation Index)

2008)

ITEC Growth Size of sector relating to GDP


Information an communication technology expenditure per capita


Total revenue from all telecoms. Services (US$)

ITU

Growth of Sector World Bank (World Development Indicators)

Market Enablement

Business Environment Score

Economist Intelligence Unit (eReadiness Report)

Legal Environment Score Economist Intelligence Unit (eReadiness Report)

Ease of doing business index ( reverse rank)

World Bank (http://www.doingbusiness.org/economyrankings/)

Bangladesh ICT Roadmap (Draft)_200809

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