The “Digital Center Entrepreneurs Conference-2014” will be held on 11 November at the National Parade Ground to celebrate the fourth anniversary of the establishment of Digital Centers in all the Union Parishads of the country.
A press conference was held on 9th November regarding the conference and various aspects of the conference. The press release was arranged by the Access to Information (a2i) program of the PM’s office. The Press conference was held at the Chameli hall of the Prime Minister’s office. The main essay was presented by Kabir Bin Anowar, Director General(Administration) of the Prime Minister’s office and Project Director of the a2i program.
Kabir Bin Anowar, Director General(Administration) of the Prime Minister’s office and Project Director of the a2i program in his presentation said, “The Digital Centers are playing an incredible role by establishing a knowledge based society to realize Digital Bangladesh by 2021 and to transform Bangladesh to a medium income country. This conference is being held to recognize the contribution of the Digital Center entrepreneurs, to remind the people of Bangladesh once again about their potential and to celebrate the World Summit on Information Society Award(WSIS) and World Information Technology and Service Alliance(WITSA).” He also said that more than 11,000 entrepreneurs from all the unions, Pourasava, and City Corporation Digital Centers will participate in this conference. Honorable Prime Minister Sheik Hasina has given her kind consent to grace the conference as the Chief Guest.
Establishment of the Digital centers is one of the many endeavors of the government to realize Digital Bangladesh. Digital centers are a modern IT based, service rich centers. These centers are established in Union Parishads, Pourasova and City Corporation wards. These Information and Service centers have been set up in all the Union Parishads(4501) of the country to provide grass root population with various types of services with minor expense and time. This also helps to bring these people to the mainstream development of the country. These centers have been established under the leadership of the a2i program of the Prime Minister’s office, with the technical assistance of UNDP, local government division and Bangladesh Computer Council. Honorable Prime Minister and New Zealand’s former Prime Minister and UNDP’s global Administrator Helen Clerk launched the Union Information and Service Centers on 11th November of 2011 by video conferencing. The PM was at her office and Helen Clerk was at Char Kukri Mukri. At present these Information and Service Centers are known as Digital Centers.
The Digital Centers have become a unique place for the rural people to receive government-private-business information and services in all unions(4547), in all PouraSova(321) and in 11 City Corporations. These Information and Digital Centers have so far provided 12 crore service. 7 crore of these are online birth registration. The entrepreneurs have so far earned BDT 140 crore by providing these services till date. Some unique achievements of the Digital centers are online registration of 10 lakh people seeking to go to Malaysia or abroad for work and receiving land porcha at home. The other notable services that are being offered by these digital centers are mobile banking, life insurance, bill payment of PolliBidyut, public forms, public examination results, online admission in universities, online birth-death registration and more(60 types). This saves both time and money of the people.
Representatives of the print, electronic and online media were present at the press conference.
