STAFF REPORTER
State Minister for Information and Communication Technology (ICT), Junaid Ahmed Palak yesterday said that the government is planning to enact ‘Digital Security Act 2016’.It will be an elaborated version of the previously planned Cyber Security Act 2015. With increased digital services, the crimes are not occurred only through online services, rather through digital devices. So we are planning to enact a more elaborate act to tackle all sort of digital crimes”, he said during a press meet at the auditorium of ICT division in Agargaon.
ICT division has organized a ‘meet the press’ on the occasion of the two years of the present government. During the press meet, Palak explained the road map of the government for 2016.
Palak said that they have started working on Digital Security Act from last April. “The idea was given to us by eminent ICT specialist Mostafa Jabbar while we were working on cyber-security act”.
He said that all the relevant stake holders of the ICT industry are involved with the formation of the act. We want to formulate a comprehensive act to combat the imminent cyber-security threat”
Palak said that the government will enact another act titled ‘National e-service Act 2016’. “We plan to table the act in the next cabinet meeting”.
The State Minister informed that they are planning to establish an Innovation Design and Entrepreneurship Academy.
“We have worked with the Bangladesh Association of Software and Information Services (BASIS) to design the academy. Through this academy, we will train our software engineers to go for We hope to start the academy by the end of 2016”.
“The government targets 1000 innovations and $5 billion export by 2021”, he added.
Palak said that the government also plans to develop an inception of ecosystem for gaming industry. We are focusing on mobile application development.
“Our apps are doing very good. One particular game ‘Heroes of 71’ was downloaded for more than three lakh times. So our gaming industry is moving forward and we plan to provide more funding for the gaming industry”.
The State Minister informed that they will also start establishing about 500 BPO centre and free lancing centers in upazilla level to increase the participation of workforce in ICT development.
He said that within the next few years the ICT division will establish seven incubators and training centers, digital bus for remote areas, digital forensic labs, software quality assurance labs and 3000 computer cum language labs.
Palak also said that the ICT division also plans some social services and including infolady:e-service at doorst, national helpline: unique know all services and e-shop: reducing the middleman services.
Highlighting some of the success of the government’s ICT initiative, the State Minister said that the Bangladesh has already been acknowledged by global rating agencies for their stellar achievements in the ICT sector.
In global service location index 2016, Bangladesh moves up to four spots from 26th to 22nd.
ICT division has shown remarkable success in governance. “In the last fiscal 2014-15, we have a 102% implementation of Annual Development Plan (ADP). It is also the only government division which has 100% execution of the cabinet decisions”, he said.
Palak said over 18,500 government offices are brought under a dedicated broadband network. About 800 video conferencing systems were installed to ensure e-governance.
The capacity of National Data Center has been upgraded up to 3,000 Tera bytes (TB), he added.
One of the successes of the government in last year was the launching of internet.org. “Now at 30 sites, one million users per month are using free Internet through internet.org”.
