Sixty percent people who visit the government websites once do not access them for a second time due to unavailability of information, said State Minister for Information and Communication Technology Zunaid Ahmed Palak.
He said people do not enter the government and ministries websites twice as they are not updated and do not provide necessary information.
The government is trying to make the websites of the government and the ministries dynamic and up-to-date, he added.
The state minister made the remark at a social media dialogue presided over by NBR Chairman Nojibur Rahman on the Officers Club premises in the capital Saturday night.
With the theme ‘encouraging people to pay tax’, the National Board of Revenue (NBR), with support from Access to Information (a2i) programme under the Prime Minister’s Office organised the programme in observation of the national income tax fair 2015.
People have illogical fear about the taxes authorities and it has to be removed from them, particularly from the mind of young individuals eligible for paying tax, which can only be done through digitalisation, the state minister said.
With regard to the NBR website, Palak said the government will introduce a helpline to the website where an official will always be online to answer queries made by the service seekers.
He also said a call center will be in service to facilitate getting desired information, which may come into reality by December.
Palak said a mobile application will be designed to help people get all services including submission of income tax returns.
He also suggested NBR to introduce a youtube channel to let people know about its activities.
Only 12 lakh people out of six crore population pay tax in the country. The authorities have to use ICT and social media to raise the number, he added.
Prime Ministers Office Principal Secretary Abul Kalam Azad, Bangladesh Association of Software and Information Services (BASIS) President Shameem Ahsan, Information and Communication Technology Ministry’s Secretary Shyam Sunder Sikder, NBR member Parvez Iqbal and Association of Mobile Telecom Operators of Bangladesh (AMTOB) secretary general TIM Nurul Kabir, among others, spoke at the programme.