Today’s Digital Centre Entrepreneurs’ Conference celebrates four years of union information and service centres.
Nearly 5,000 USICs have been established in all unions to help give online access to people without their own personal internet connections. Their growth has helped drive forward the government’s plans to deliver more public services online by enabling poorer people to access government services. They have also been a boon for rural entrepreneurs who want to use the internet.
Since 2010, USICs have generated Tk130cr in fees for the over 11,000 self-employed entrepreneurs who help run them for the government, and over 60 million birth registrations and 1.2 million land registration records have been electronically registered.
The success of USICs in improving access to public services in all parts of the country has been recognised by awards from the World Summit on Information Society and World Information Technology and Service Alliance.
Among other achievements of this project, which is run by the Access to Information (A2i) program from the PMO with support from UNDP and USAID, has been the growth of online payments for utility services and the development of multimedia educational content that is now used by over 3 million students.
With over 20 million people now using mobile banking services, the government needs to keep up to speed with the private sector in ensuring it too makes optimum use of the internet to reduce bureaucratic delays by providing more forms and services online.
The benefits of such programs can be seen in many ways, including increased tax revenues with more and more tax forms being submitted online. It is important to build on these successes further to achieve the goal of a Digital Bangladesh.
