Recent Trend Of ICT, Uses Of ICT, ICT Policy And Cyber Security At Work In Bangladesh

In this modern society Information and Communication Technology has become an important tool to realize socio-economic development of a country. Advances in ICT have brought tremendous improvement in welfare of a country. It has made the citizens of a country aware of their rights. People now demand to know everything from the government. World’s developed countries like United States, Japan got the highest benefits from ICT. Now the low and middle income countries have realized the potentials of ICT and they are now advancing towards development of ICT for their own benefits. ICT also has created job opportunity for many unemployed persons and great a major role in poverty reduction in many countries. India is an example of such type of country which has become an information powerhouse. In India there are many software companies which are ruling the world. India is earning a lot of money from exporting software. In 2009 Bangladesh government has introduced a new term like “Digital Bangladesh”. Its vision 2021 goal has made this poor country a lower middle income country which also focuses on advancement of ICT.

Recent trend of ICT

In the last three years there is a tremendous growth in ICT sector of Bangladesh. There is a market of 160 million people in Bangladesh. The whole country is spending around 160 billion USD per year which is increasing by 6% per year. After introduction of 3G service internet use increased by 22% by 2017. With growing internet connectivity and cheaper smartphones, we have seen increased emergence of digital savvy customers. All government offices now use computers for their daily work. In previous days there was typewriter in government offices, but no none of them uses typewriter. Not only that every offices now use internet for their service delivery. Every government offices now have their own websites. In that website people can easily find the citizen charter, come to know how and where they will find desired services. Being internet available in every part of the country government has introduced e-nothi which will reduce uses of paper in government offices.

Uses of ICT

Bangladesh Government has taken many steps to implement digital Bangladesh. Now ICT is being used in both private and public sectors of Bangladesh. These are

• Education
• Agriculture
• Business
• Administration
• Healthcare
• Information and Utility
• Education.

Government of Bangladesh has installed multimedia classrooms in 22, 500 secondary and 1, 700 primary schools to make the classes enjoyable. 1, 000 teachers have been trained as master trainer to train another 20, 000 teachers. A webportal www. teachers. gov. bd has been created where teachers can find multimedia teaching contents. Books are available in internet now. About 300 textbooks are available in www. ebook. gov. bd. Results of public exams are now being published in website. Students can now submit application forms for admission in public universities through online while few years back students have to travel long distances for submitting applications.

Agriculture Use

ICT in agriculture is providing a great role in providing necessary and correct information to farmers very fast. Since smartphones are cheaper now, farmers can find necessary information in websites. The website launched by the government www. ais. gov. bd helps farmers to find necessary information about fertilizer, harmful insects and insecticides. Online fertilizer recommendation, an initiative of soil development institute helps farmers to use right fertilizer for right soil. 12, 000 mobile phones has been disseminated to the agriculture extension agents by Ministry of Agriculture.

Business

The internet banking or e-banking has made the banking easy for general people. Now people can send money from one bank account to another by a single click in computer or smartphone. Buying and selling products online has become a part of our daily life. Websites like www. ajkerdeal. com, www. rokomary. com, www. bikroy. com has made shopping easy for general people. In near future every products will be available online for shopping. E-mail and smartphone based apps are being used worldwide for business purpose. There was a time medical representatives have to report to office daily but now they do not have to go to the office. Rather they inform the office about their sale through their apps. Registration of companies in Register of Joint Stock Company needs a very few moments. Administration In every union union digital centres have been installed where birth registration, online registration for prospective migrant workers, submitting applications for university admission can be done easily. NBR has introduced e-TIN services from 2013. About 6, 00, 000 tax payers have been registered through this service. E-land record system (E-porcha) has been introduced which will eliminate the previous analogue record keeping system and reduce the use of paper. Implementation of National E-Service system is in progress. Government has introduced national E-tatthyakosh which is an online encyclopedia of Bangladesh.

Healthcare

Through Union Information and Service Centres, telemedicine is providing services in 4, 536 unions. This programs runs under a2i project of Prime Minister’s Office. In near future E-clinic project will be launched which will build awareness among the people and rural people will be able to consult with the doctor through video conferencing. Information and UtilityWith the blessing of ICT people can now pay electricity, gas and water bills through mobile phones. Till February 2014, 54 million water bills, 1. 33 million gas bills and 21. 2 million electricity bills were paid through mobile phones.

ICT Policy of Bangladesh

Bangladesh has introduced its first National ICT Policy in 2009. Government of Bangladesh has first acknowledged ICT in 1998 as a key to bring socio-economic changes. In 2002 the national ICT policy was first adopted. Then in 2008 the policy was revised and the policy was adopted by government in 2009. The vision of national ICT policy includes:

• Expand and diversify the uses of ICT to establish a transparent, responsive and accountable government
• Develop skilled human resourcesEnhance social equity
• Ensure cost-effective delivery of citizen-services through public-private partnerships
• Support the national goal of becoming a middle-income country within ten years and become developed country within thirty years.

Key features of National ICT Policy 2009 include:

• Bringing the social disadvantaged people to the mainstream of ICT
• Ensure the citizen’s participation in local and central government and in policy making
• Provide incentives to the private sector and NGOs to generate and share locally relevant digitals content and online services which will be made of local language
• Bring into focus children's issues which will include protection of children from harmful digital content
• This policy will encourage maximum utilisation of ICT services nationwide to boost productivity of small, medium and micro enterprises and agriculture sector. This policy will also focus on innovation and competitiveness among these businesses.
• Ensure better monitoring, skills gap determination, appropriate training and modern enterprise operations to enhance productivity of large enterprises by encouraging immediate implementation of end to end applications (ERP)
• Encourage e-commerce, e-payments, and e-transactions in general to bring in a new dimension of productivity to the economy at the earliest
• Ensure the use of Bangla in all types of ICT activities
• Reduce harassment, time and cost to the public and ensure transparency and accountability in government service delivery by monitoring citizens' charter and making service delivery results public
• Establish interconnectivity across government offices for effective data sharing.

There are many challenges of implementing National ICT Policy 2009. These challenges are given below:

• Building a new inclusive information and knowledge system
• Intellectual Property Rights will limit our ability for accessing all types of softwares
• Absence of Universal access policy for Bangladesh within short period of time
• Building E-learning Infrastructure
• Establishment of Digital Government
• Access to Government Information
• Quick establishment of online transaction and payment infrastructure
• Promotion of e-business and e-commerce
• Automation of financial industry.

Cyber Security

Although Bangladesh adopted Nation Cyber Security Strategy in 2014, in National Cyber Security Index (NCSI) Bangladesh has ranked 73 among 100 countries. Bangladesh has also adopted National Cyber Security Declaration in 2017. But these measures were not enough for preventing cyber attacks. In February, 2016 hackers succeeded to loot USD 81 million from the account of Bangladesh Bank in Federal Reserve Bank of New York. United States blamed North Korea for this heist. The major goal of Nation Cyber Security Strategy (2014) was to prevent all type of cyber attack, thereby creating a safe, secure and resilient critical national information infrastructure for our economy and society.

But even after taking such strategy, situation of cyber security in Bangladesh is not good. Girls are being harassed through Facebook, imo. But very few of them were brought into book by the law enforcing agency. Terrorism is spreading using facebook, twitter, instant messengers. Bangladesh is one of the countries where every year many computers fall into virus attack. Computers of Government offices are much prone to cyber attack. Financial institutes are also under persistent threat. A security lab conducted a survey where it found that about 73% of the companies are relying on end-point solutions and others are unaware of cyber security. The general people are totally unaware of cyber security. Now a days many restaurants offer free wifi services. But people do not understand that these free wifi connections are not secure. In recent times miscreants are using facebook for spreading rumors. In 2016 based on a rumor in Nasirnagor, Brahmanbaria a lot of houses of minority people were vandalized. In 2018 students started a protest after death of two students in road accident. In that time some political parties tried to spread rumor and create a chaos in the whole country. Because of the facebook it became easier to spread chaos by posting rumors.

Recommendations

Although Information and Communication Technology can be abused by many miscreants, ICT has become a part of our human life. To prevent cyber attacks following steps may be taken:

• At first government should initiate a risk assessment process
• Take an intelligent-led analytics-based approach
• Invest in cyber security intelligence
• Educate government officers about cyber security
• Government should take a proactive data security strategy
• If government can take above mentioned steps cyber attacks in our country may reduce in near future.