Broadly speaking, a digital society is an ICT driven knowledge-based society where information will be readily available online and where all possible tasks of the government, semi-government and also private spheres will be processed using the modern technology. So, “Digital Bangladesh” must guarantee efficient and effective use of modem ICT in all spheres of society with a view to establishing good governance.
Due to globalization, Bangladesh has already been connected with the outside world. Yet In the field of ICT, our only grand success lies in Mobile telecommunication which has brought an abrupt change in the telecommunication scenario of the country. However, in the other spheres of ICT, our achievement is very insignificant and we are still för away from transforming ourselves into a knowledge-based society. Building a strong ICT infrastructure is the pre-requisite for making Bangladesh a digital one. For this, we need to focus on the following relevant issues:
Latest statistics reveal that Bangladesh faces a power deficit of up to 2000 MW against a demand of 5000 MW daily. It may be noted that for proper ICT development an uninterrupted power supply is a must.
Outside Dhaka, at present, a few computer network infrastructures have been developed so far. Apart from some educational institutes outside Dhaka, observation finds that most of the LAN setups are Dhaka centric. This observation reveals the reality of the digital gap even within the country.
For the ICT development internet users of the country must be increased. Statistics (2007) revealed that internet penetration in our country is only 0.3 %. But the situation is improving rapidly. Many countries (e.g. France and Malaysia) have started to use open-source software in ICT development projects for cost-effectiveness. Unfortunately in our ICT development domain, the culture of using open source has not yet been introduced.
From different sources, it has been learnt that English literacy rate in Bangladesh is less than one percent. In the arena of ICT English has become lingua-Franca. Unfortunately, in this case, our position is the worst in the sub-continent. For making a digital Bangladesh by 2021, the government must address the above issues effectively and efficiently in transparent manners. • The farmers will use all types of modern motorized tools instead of traditional equipments and their hand-driven tools to cultivate their lands. They will have to get ample online help about producing more and more crops.
Patients will have to get telemedicine and telesurgery facilities with the use of audio and video conferencing based net. Besides, 24-hour online help will radically change traditional medical services.
All the educational and commercial institutions will come under a good network system and the details of these institutions and their activities will be available on websites. E-paper, digitized pen, e-book, pen drive and screen-touch tools will replace the traditional tools for many different reasons.
Time has come for Bangladesh to develop her information technology and to turn her “Digital Bangladesh”. We need to bear in mind that to be away from enriched information technology means to live like a frog living in a well. We should look at the advanced countries of the world so that we can get modern ways and strategies from them to bring about a revolution for our ICT based society. We are lucky that our government has taken a lot of programs to make Bangladesh a digital one.
