Digital revolution still entails myriad challenges

Thereport24.com, Dhaka:

Digital World 2015, the biggest international technological conference in South Asia, began at Bangabandhu International Conference Centre on Tuesday.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina inaugurated the event, which drew huge crowds despite the ongoing political unrest across the country.

The crowd would have been bigger had there been peace in the country.

The conference was arranged by the government to showcase what it did to take the country forward in terms of information technology and also to outline the steps it would take in the coming days.

But to what extent the government has succeeded in living up to the expectations of the people about this sector is still a crucial question. We do not think the government has achieved even a 50 percent success rate.

We have around three crore educated people looking for employment in the country. The country would have made more progress if the government could have created self-employment opportunities for this large number of unemployed people by harnessing the power of technological knowledge and skill.

The government is yet to take any effective step to provide jobs for the unemployed section of the society.

Sajeeb Wazed Joy, ICT adviser to the prime minister, and Zunaid Ahmed Palak, state minister at the Ministry of ICT, are striving to help the jobless people gain skills in technology. They have announced that as many as 50,000 people would be provided training to help them specialize in information technology.

They also said the number would be increased gradually but implementation of the plan is the challenge now.

We think the failure to implement the plan will be caused by the dearth of skilled instructors, lack of patronage at the district town level and the lack of proper supervision.

Internet speed is a crucial factor in the IT sector. Sajeeb Wazed Joy has recently said the internet users in the country would be able to get the speed offered by the 4G technology by 2016.

But such a bold promise fails to build the intended excitement as even 3G services are not yet available in every part of the country. There is no point in promoting digital revolution if a good internet speed cannot be ensured, and that is one aspect the government should seriously focus on.

As far as we know, the youth skill development programmes introduced by the government are not running in full swing in many areas. Besides, there remain questions about the instructors and the quality of the training. It is not clear how the government will implement its plans without resolving the problems.

In such a situation, the government needs to find out people who have extensive skills in the sector and task them with dealing with the existing challenges.

We do not want only to be the technology markets of the developed world. We also want to take our own technological sector to a level equal to theirs.

Ends/thereport24.com/MI/Feb 15, 2015