Designing e-Government for the Poor - Tanzania Development ...

Bangladesh
Title: E-village communities
Proposer: Mr. Hasanur Rahman, Deputy Secretary, Ministry of
Science and Information & Communication Technology
Country: Bangladesh
Date: March 2005
I. INTRODUCTION
Information and knowledge are prerequisites for development. Access
to information and knowledge strengthens civil society, and leads to poverty
reduction by allowing individuals and communities to expand their choices.
Information and knowledge is linked to financially viable markets and income
generating opportunities, or availability of government services, education,
and skills development programmes. In addition, recognition and dissemination
of indigenous knowledge, especially that of women, can contribute to
development, competitiveness, and productivity. Knowledge empowers people
and provides them with the opportunity to make informed choices.
One of the significant challenges to ICT expansion is the spontaneous
participation of rural people in electronic village communities. Approximately
80 per cent of the total population of Bangladesh lives in poor rural
areas where access to ICT is limited. Lack of information about the market
and agricultural production affects the farmers’ potential earnings. ICT
enabled services could be employed to disseminate the necessary information
and help rural communities to better confront development challenges.
Among the various models of e-community centres including civic
telecommunication centres, telecommunication centre franchises, phone
shops, and multipurpose community telecentre, public telephone shops are
common in Bangladesh. Telephone, fax, e-mail and Internet service centres
are in operation in some urban areas of Bangladesh. The number of such
centres is rapidly growing, which in turn promotes ICT usage, and local
and foreign entrepreneurship. Grameen Phone and other mobile phone
companies have expanded their telephone services to the majority of
villages in Bangladesh. However, rural areas still lack ICT-enabled service
and the proper ICT infrastructure.
Bangladesh has service centres for telecommunications in 64 districts
and 464 sub-districts. The number of fixed line telephones is 0.83 million,
and the number of mobile telephones is about 3 million. There are 4
Ground Satellite Stations, 2 International Trunk Exchange, 80,000 ISP
subscribers, and 145 ISPs. There are 67 VSAT users, and 27 VSAT
providers. There are 0.50 million PCs, and approximately 0.082million
internet connections. A fiber optic submarine cable network is expected to
be available next year.
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