State Minister for ICT Zunaid Ahmed Palak mentioned that making ICT education compulsory at secondary and higher secondary levels and setting up computer labs in schools are ‘two unique innovative initiatives’ of the government. As a result of the implementation of these two initiatives under the guidance of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her son and ICT advisor Sajeeb Wazed Joy, the village students are now easily getting educated in ICT education and freelancing. Young people have become ‘tech savvy’. Also, due to self-invented ‘e-documents’, even though everything was closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the government’s activities did not stop for a moment. The ‘Surokkha’ app developed by 5 young programmers of the ICT department has become the world’s most popular corona vaccine management app. There is also a ‘digital zoo’ for cashless shopping. As well as rural-urban by setting up digital service centers; the disparity and distance between rich and poor and between women and men has reduced. Time, suffering and cost are reduced.
In this way, in the last 14 years, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has made the country’s economy dependent on technology instead of labor. This time he announced to build a smart Bangladesh by combining innovation, knowledge and research.
ICT State Minister Zunaid Ahmed Palak presented these facts at the ‘Innovation Talk’ held at Abdul Karim Sahitya Bisharad Auditorium of Bangla Academy in the capital on Friday. This topic-based single literary chat was conducted by the world-renowned Bangladeshi microbiologist Senjuti Saha. In addition to presenting her own piece of experience in the chat, this young scientist enjoyed various innovative talks with ICT State Minister Zunaid Ahmed Palak.
In the discussion ICT State Minister Zunaid Ahmed Palak said, ‘I have come to this event for the first time. This is a wonderful arrangement. I want to tell a story of digital Bangladesh in this innovative talk. When Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina announced Digital Bangladesh, when we were celebrating the golden jubilee of independence. After that, her aim was to create technology-based employment for the youth, the aim was to ensure high-speed internet services for all citizens, to make all government services available online and to reach people’s doorsteps.
At that time, Senjuti said, ‘Science does not exist without literature, literature does not exist without science. And for me literature of science is innovation. Innovation is – new things that benefit people. When I lived in Canada, I thought, how can I take what I learned to the people of the country? How can I make sure that my work is benefiting the people of Bangladesh, where I grew up? What I was working on in Canada may not have been of much use in Bangladesh. The reason behind it is that innovation cannot be done sitting everywhere. So when I came back to Bangladesh I thought of doing something new. That was to reduce the 10/90 gap.
Zunaid Ahmed Palak said, “Union Digital Center is such an innovation that has reduced the gap between citizen and citizen services.
Citing an example, the state minister said that 14 years ago, only 14 percent of the people in the country got electricity services. There were only 50 lakh internet users. There was no such thing as ICT. But now computers and ICT have improved greatly. HSC student Trishna is earning a handsome income through IT outsourcing in Sherpur’s Kakarkanda. 100% of people are covered by electricity; connected to the internet.
Highlighting the government’s plan to build a smart Bangladesh in the new literary work of Digital Bangladesh, Palak said, this time we have taken the initiative to establish ‘Center for Fourth Industrial Revolution’ and 57 specialized research labs at the university level through joint partnership with the World Economic Forum. We have already set up a nano tech lab at BUET in partnership with MIT. We have already set up robotics, cloud computing, AI and VLC labs in several universities to make the country a high-income developed country by 2041. We want to be smart through innovation.
State Minister Palak and Scientist Senjuti answered various questions of the audience and audience from different countries during the 10th session of Dhaka Lit Fest.