Officials from NIA visited government offices in Dhaka, Bangladesh in mid-September in order to conduct a needs assessment on a couple projects that NIA will support in Bangladesh in 2013 and 2014. One project is regarding the technical support for a mobile service delivery platform and the other is a possible e-government master plan funded by KOICA.



One of the main meetings and counterparts that NIA talked to in order to gain a better understanding of the current situation in Bangladesh for both the World Bank’s MSDP (Mobile Service Delivery Platform) Project as well as to learn more about overall e-government projects, status and initiatives in Bangladesh was the Access to Information (A2I) group under the Bangladesh Prime Minister’s Office (PMO).



While meeting with policy advisors and technical experts for the A2I at PMO, it proved very useful as projects and services were beginning to take shape with Bangladesh’s e-government and overall ICT industry as a whole. Demos and persuasion of making e-government more important back in 2008, 2009 and 2010 were paying off in some good policies, services and projects going forward as they follow the guideline and vision set forth in the Digital Bangladesh 2021. Over the last 3 years, they have seen multiple mobile governance services successfully rolled out in different government and non-government sectors. There have been some good success stories seen in the Education, Agriculture and Commercial arenas. With the advancement of the mobile networks to large population as well as the education of the people on how to use mobile services, the Bangladesh government strongly feels that it is the correct time to introduce mobile governance services to the masses.



Access to Information (A2I) has taken multiple initiatives to create a receptive environment to achieve its goal “Service at the fingertips.” For other successful examples; (i) National e-Government Framework, (ii) NESS (National e-Services System) which is a centralized ICT enabled Service Processing Platform for all Government Service delivery offices of Bangladesh (iii) m-Services, were all discussed in greater detail.



Another good meeting was held at the Bangladesh’s Ministry of ICT (MoICT), where the delegation from NIA had a chance to sit down and have a very good discussion with the Secretary of MoICT - N.I. Khan. Discussions about the specific areas that the Secretary wanted to pursue and hopes that some of these areas may be undertaken through cooperation with Korea.



The MoICT Secretary was very keen to learn about inter-workings of the government ministries, for example MKE and other ministries. He also wanted to learn more about IT Park masterplan development and what Korea has done with this type of model in the past and how a PPP model can be used. He then mentioned that development of Tech. Universities was also needed as they can act as incubators and build up the local e-capacity. Another area in which the secretary has some interest and knows Korea can help and that in Digital Signatures. They are going to license 6 Certification Authorities very soon so need some help in getting it going in Bangladesh. Virtual universities were another area that he saw some possible development as course material needs to be developed as it is scarce now in Bangladesh but it could be used to help those in remote areas. Finally the Secretary mentioned that mobile services on the National e-Services System (NESS) would also need some cooperation in order to develop further.



All in all the mission served its purpose of analyzing the needs of Bangladesh and assessing the current situation at this time so future ICT cooperation can take place between Korea and Bangladesh going forward in 2013 and 2014.