Towards Digital Bangladesh By Zunaid Ahmed Palak

Photo Courtesy: National Mobile Application Awarness & Capacity Building

On January 12, 2014, the present government has elapsed one more year towards the destination of Digital Bangladesh. Though one year is not enough for a great leap in progress, I believe, within a year we could initiate a lot of things which would help us to materialise the Digital Bangladesh. I would like to depict a brief picture of the achievements of the ICT sector in 2014 and our initiation and attempts for achieving Digital Bangladesh in the last year.
Tele-density is an effective measure for calculating the progress of the ICT sector. In Bangladesh, mobile phone penetration and internet penetration got an accelerated momentum in 2014. On December 2013, the number of mobile phone users was 11 crore 38 lakhs which has increased to 11 crore and 98 lacs within a year. In the same time, the number of internet users has increased to 43 million from 35 million, which indicates a positive trend to the walk of Digital Bangladesh. The growing demand of mobile phone and internet is the outcome of launching of 3G network. The demand of bandwidth is also growing in time after the commencement of 3G networks for mobile phone operators. Realising the upward bound instinct of data usage, we came to an agreement with the SEE-ME-WE-5 consortium for getting the second sub-marine cable connection. Hopefully, Bangladesh could be able to connect to the cable within the first quarter of 2016.
At present, mobile applications is a popular platform for availing services and keeping this in mind, we have inaugurated 25 apps of the 100 selected that the government is planning to release on selected services provided by various ministries, divisions and directorates. Besides, as part of disseminating public services to the people through smartphones, the government has decided to develop another 500 applications. The ICT division in collaboration with a private company will develop the applications and an agreement has already been signed on August 2014 to this effect. To solve the 10 major problems of the citizens with the help of IT, the ICT Division organised the National Mobile Hackathon competition, the biggest ever hackathon in Bangladesh. Some 1,700 programmers, students, freelancers and professional app developers participated in the competition who were divided into 340 groups and from that gathering, 10 IT-based solutions were selected.
To create skilled manpower in the IT and ITES sector, Hi-Tech Park Authority has selected 100 IT graduates for delivering advanced training on Java and now they are under training at the Infosys Technologies Limited at Mohishore of India. Under the Leveraging ICT for Growth, Employment and Governance (known as LICT) programme, we have offered training to the 34,000 youngsters in which 20,000 are getting foundation training, 10,000 are receiving trade related IT Top-Up skill training and the remaining 4,000 are availing Fast Track Future Leader training with the aim to lead the IT industry in the near future. On the other side, we are going to provide freelancing training to 55,000 youngsters under the Learning and Earning project for making them capable of earning foreign currency as well as to generate self-employment. It's a matter of pride that Bangladesh ranked third in the online market place o'DESK and 13th in Elance (combined position is seven). Through freelancing, Bangladesh earned USD 21 million from the o'Desk and Elance in the last fiscal year. The Bari Boshe Barolok programme, implemented to create another  14,420 women freelancers, started in March 2014 and came to an end in February 2014.
Without developing the ICT backbone, it is quite impossible to create a Digital Bangladesh. For uplifting the infrastructure, we have connected 18,132 government offices up to the upazila level under the Info Sarkar and Bangla Gov Net programmes. 31 kilometres of fibre-optic cable connection has been imbedded from the Bangladesh Computer Council to the Bangladesh Secretariat and Bangladesh Secretariat has also come under the free WiFi coverage so that the officials could speed up their administrative works. Moreover, for a sustainable industrial growth of ICT, Hi-Tech Park is a crucial element and we are on the verge of a contract to appoint a developer in the Kaliakoir Hi-Tech Park. Furthermore, for generating dexterous manpower, ECNEC approved the bill of Establishment of Digital University at the premise of Kaliakoir Hi-Tech Park.
To make our school-going generation competent for the 21st century, we have installed modern laboratories in 3,500 schools across the country. The number of Union Digital Centres (UDCs) has expanded from 4517 to 5,275 and now, the people from remotest part of the country are receiving 200 public services through those UDCs. On June 23, 2014, Bangladesh launched the National Web Portal, the largest Government web portal in the world which contains 25 thousand websites. Mr Sajeeb Wajed Joy, ICT Affairs Advisor to the Prime Minister, inaugurated the National Portal.
Through the relentless initiatives of the ICT Division and the co-operation of private organisations, especially the trade and expertise bodies of ICT sectors such as BASIS, BCS, BACCO, ISPAB etc. we have crossed a remarkable path and hence, Bangladesh acquired some international rewards and recognitions. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was nominated for the 'South-South Cooperation Visionary Award 2014' for her noteworthy role in advancing Bangladesh towards a digital system and expansion of education. For bringing fundamental changes in providing services to 'Citizen's Doorstep' in the pursuit of eGovernance, on June 2014, the Prime Minister's Office of Bangladesh was awarded the prestigious 'World Summit on Information Society 2014' prize at the WSIS+10 High-Level Event of ITU at Geneva. In addition, Bangladesh was awarded the 'Global ICT Excellence Award 2014' for its outstanding contribution in social development of the nation by using ICT.
The world is changing at a tremendous pace and the tool for changing the world is Information Technology. To keep Bangladesh in this track, the Prime Minister has declared Vision 2021 in 2008. Under her visionary and time-befitting leadership, Bangladesh has achieved noticeable progress towards the implementation of Digital Bangladesh in the last six years. I am confident that country will be able to transform itself into the Digital Bangladesh envisioned within 2021.

The writer is State Minister, ICT division, Ministry of Posts and Telecommunication

Published: 12:00 am Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Computer science education and research By Mohammad Kaykobad

Our brilliant girls at Grace Hopper celebration with the first female Turing award winner Dr. Frances Allen. Photo Courtesy: Mohammad Kaykobad

This part of the world, particularly Bangladesh, has always been fortunate in making great starts. The first computer of Pakistan was diverted to Chittagong port thanks to initiatives of our scientists at the Atomic Energy Centre, Dhaka as early as 1964. This created an opportunity for our scientists and engineers to use this versatile technology in those days. Not only that, banks also started to get benefit of this technology. Formal degree course in computers started at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology in 1982 through the opening of the Department of Computer Engineering. Initially postgraduate degrees and later on programs for undergraduate degrees were offered. It was not known how the graduates will be received in the society, and in fact it was extremely difficult for our graduates to get programming jobs since employers were not sure whether a CSE graduate would be able to write programs. There was a dearth of teachers as with books and laboratory facilities. Even then, the most meritorious students of the country opted for this department. Deficiency of teachers and libraries were compensated by enormous interest of students in the initial days in learning this latest technology and earning enviable skill. Each of them has been established as good professionals in advanced countries. Now the department is 32 years old. Other public and private universities have also opened computer science related departments. So it is impossible to enumerate all the success stories in computer education and research. I shall try to highlight those I know, possibly unknowingly skipping some more important achievements.
BUET graduate Areef Reza won a Java competition in the early days from the University of Waterloo. This gave us a lot of confidence, that in spite of many shortcomings, our students are learning and earning commendable computer skill. In the meantime Manzur, Mostofa, Shaikat, Suman, Zia and many others published their research findings in journals of international repute even when they were still undergraduates. In 1997, for the first time in the soil of Bangladesh, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) International Collegiate Programming Contest(ICPC) Asia Regional contest was held where the team of Suman, Shaikat and Shushom  qualified for participation in the prestigious World Finals of ACM ICPC.  They shared the 24th position with Stanford University in a contest of 54 teams from round the world.  This has definitely contributed to the confidence of our students.  After this success with the initiative of enthusiast Zakaria Swapan, the first national Computer Programming Contest (NCPC) was organised jointly by the Daily Star and Proshkia at the then Hotel Sheraton where the then Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was the chief guest along with many important ministers. That event inspires our students. Since then, especially students of Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology participated in all the world finals. Meantime our students were performing very well in internet based programming contests organised by the University of Valladolid, Spain. Sheikh Hasina awarded a cash prize of Taka one lakh to each of the nine students of whom eight were from the CSE department of BUET and the other from DU.  In 2000, the BUET team occupied the 11th position in a 60-team contest leaving behind teams of world famous universities like MIT, Stanford, Harvard, Berkeley in the 24th world finals of ACM ICPC. Meanwhile our students participated in the Asia region Kanpur site contest. In 1999 BUET became the champions and DU runner up. In the same year the BUET team repeated the feat. While universities of the 8th most populous country that is ours fail to be in any respectable shortlist of best universities, our students of the most advanced technology make their way into these lists. Many of our graduates have been working as coaches of different US universities and that too with commendable success.
Our graduate Suman Kumar Nath got admitted into the top ranked CSE school of Carnegie Mellon University, and is now an employee of the prestigious institution of Microsoft Research. By now he is a very celebrated researcher under whose leadership we could successfully complete the first ever international conference on Networking, Systems and Security at CSE department, BUET. The celebrated brilliant student and colleague Mohammad Manzur Murshed started PhD education under the supervision of a very famous professor in Richard Brent at ANU. He has created an opportunity for some 60/70 Bangladeshi students to pursue their higher education in a single school of Monash University. Dr Murshed's excellence is so well-known, that he became the occasional Convocation Speaker of Monash University when he was in his mid-thirties. We felt enormously honoured with this success of one of our brightest graduates. By now our graduates have gotten admitted into the finest schools including MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Berkeley, CalTech, Waterloo, Toronto and Oxford. Professor Md Saidur Rahman of our department wrote a book in co-authorship with his supervisor Professor Takao Nishizeki, as has done Professor MMA Hashem of KUET and Professor Ashikur Rahman of BUET. Dr Ekram Hossain has become a professor at a young age in Canada along with being the editor of several IEEE Transactions. Now he is one of the youngest IEEE Fellows with a very praiseworthy list of publications and books. Dr Zulkernine of Queens University has become Canada Chair, while Professor Latifur Rahman Khan of UT Dallas has become distinguished a scientist of ACM. By now more than 50 undergraduate students have published their research findings in international journals of repute while they were still undergraduates. Such feats are very uncommon for any department not only in Bangladesh but also in advanced countries. Professor Md Saidur Rahman has also initiated a workshop named Walcom in the soil of Bangladesh. This is being organised in tandem in Bangladesh and India, and is possibly the first workshop whose proceedings are being published by Springer. This year the celebrated young professor Erik Demaine of MIT has submitted his paper and thus Walcom touched an enviable height. We started the first international conference ICCIT series in Bangladesh with massive participation of our undergraduate students. This conference is flourishing day by day with Conference Chair, Professor MA Karim, Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost of University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth.  Already 8 graduates of the CSE department, BUET have been awarded the prestigious Fulbright scholarship since 2007-8, and we feel deeply honoured at this achievement of our graduates. DU graduate Dr Julius Hossain has been working in the prestigious flagship institution of European Molecular Biology Laboratory. Back at home Professor Md Saidur Rahman got International Funai Information Technology award, Bangladesh Academy of Sciences Gold Medal. Dr Md Sohel Rahman and Dr Masud Hasan also got recognition for their research excellence. Dr Md Sohel Rahman appears to be the youngest researcher whose number of journal publications outnumbers his age. Our brilliant computer girls  Dr Nova Ahmed,  Dr Taniya Siddiqua,  Dr Tanzima Zerin Islam,  Dr Zalia Shams, Awalin Sopan, Nabila Rahman, Shantonu Hossain, Dr Sonia Jahid, Dr Farhana Dewan, Dr Shamsi Tamara Iqbal, Dr Samira Manabi Khan, Dr Sadia Afroz, Dr Fariba Khan among others joined Grace Hopper celebration and proved that they are not behind. Himel Dev, currently serving as a lecturer in the Department of CSE, BUET, has become the international winner of The Undergraduate Awards in the Computer Sciences & Information Technology category.  He was also invited to the prestigious Heidelberg Laureate Forum participated by Turing award winners and Fields medallists.
Students and teachers of computer science are good not only in studies, they are also playing pioneering roles in organising Mathematics and Informatics Olympiads throughout the country under the great leadership of the celebrated author and educationist Professor Md Zafar Iqbal. This has resulted in Md Abirul Islam of Dhaka City College winning the first ever Silver Medal from the International Olympiad in Informatics held in 2009 in Bulgaria and that too ahead of all eight contestants from the sub-continent of which four were from India and three from Sri Lanka. In 2012 in Italy, Dhananjoy Biswas and Bristy Sikder won Bronze medals for us compared to a single Bronze from India. Moreover, Bristy was awarded for being the best among female contestants. Bangladesh has the best girl computer wizard of the world who is now studying at MIT.
Students of advanced technology have always placed us in the list of the top 100 universities or less. Not only BUET, other universities like NSU, AIUB, DU, EWU and SUST have also placed themselves in this super league.  This year, Jahangirnagar University has placed themselves into this prestigious list and SUST for the thirds year in a row.  In year 2009 there were 5 teams in ICPC World Finals from this sub-continent of which 3 were from Bangladesh. Not only that, the two teams that were ranked are also from the soil of Bangladesh- BUET and DU. BUET also became runner up in Java Challenge by beating teams of many famous universities. In addition to these our students have earned reputation by participating in competitions arranged by Topcoder, Codejam, Codechef and other online contests. In 2006, 100 topmost programmers of the world were selected for a contest in New York. There was one from Bangladesh named Istiaque Ahmed of BUET and he was adjudged 79th in the world. In recognition of this programming skill of our students, companies like Microsoft and Google are offering coveted jobs to our students who are yet to graduate. In the list of offers it is not only BUET students but also students from Jahangirnagar, DU, NSU, AIUB and NSU are getting these jobs. In recent years Mashuq, Manzurur Rahman Khan, Sanny, Nafi, Riyad, Mahbub, Enjam, Aumy, Pratyoi, Hafiz, Linkin, Sadia, Sakib Safayat of BUET, Protik Mohammad Hossain, Jane Alam Jan and Aninda Majumder of DU, Sabur Zaheed of AIUB, Arifuzzaman of JU, Muntasir Azam Khan of NSU among others have been offered these jobs.  Our students are good not only in programming. Electronic Voting Machine designed by Imranul Hoque and Sonia Jahid occupied the third position among thousands of projects in World Engineers' convention held at Shanghai in 2004. MIST team showed commendable performance at NASA Lunabotics Mining contest. These are recognitions of the fact that our students have earned programming skill and that quality of CSE education in Bangladesh is commendable.
30-doctoral-degree-holder strong IIT CSE department has an intake of 45 UG students. At BUET our intake is 120, our faculty strength is around 36/37 of which only half are doctorate degree holders. Situation in other universities may not be as good. Our laboratories are not enriched either. In that sense our achievements cannot be neglected. Moreover, we also involve ourselves in inspiring our students to organise CSE days, project Shows, programming contests to increase ICT skill of our students.
If we want to construct big bridges we need civil engineers, for setting up chemical industries we need chemical engineers, for setting up hospitals we need doctors and for making the country 'digital' we need computer educated experts. Quacks will not make a good hospital. In the same way unless somebody has formal computer education the chances of success in building a large computer system is slim. Foreign experts will not be creating Digital Bangladesh. Had it been possible then Kuwait and Saudi Arabia would have turned digital long back. So in creating Digital Bangladesh our young people bestowed with commendable computer expertise should be the forerunners, universities should play the pioneering role. Success in this work will largely depend upon how much we have been able to induce this world class computer educated young people to this megaproject.

The writer is a Professor, CSE Department, BUET

Published: 12:00 am Tuesday, March 10, 2015

E-commerce needs a new prefix to grow up By Pial Islam

Photo: Star Archive

We humans are physical and social beings. We like to interact with people and things physically. Overlooking this simple fact and assuming digital interactions can substitute our inherent desires of touch and feel would fundamentally challenge what makes us human.
Many of the endeavours with e-commerce tend to overlook this simple fact. We look at trends such as the rapid adoption of digital lives and think more people will therefore embrace e-commerce. While there is certainly a strong correlation between these two things, I think we make the mistake of interpreting the correlation as causality. This is really not that different from the history of mankind's attempts to fly, when for centuries we thought wings and feathers were what we needed to fly (since birds had them) and had people strapping on wings and jumping off tall structures. It was not until 1738 when Bernoulli's book Hydrodynamica explained the concept of lift, that we fully understood the causality behind flight.
Some of the early efforts in e-commerce suffered from the correlation syndrome. At the global level, we saw pets.com, furniture.com, living.com, and many-other-dot-com efforts. They were all trying to sell things that did not make economic sense for the web. In Bangladesh too we see similar examples. But without actually naming names, let me underscore the fact that many of these players are spending significant marketing budgets today without a sufficiently strong business model. They stand the same risk of creating online ventures that do not make economic sense.
The e-commerce market, at the global level, is coming of age. The fundamental question is no longer how we build digital experiences online to replace physical experiences. The real question is in fact how we combine digital and physical experiences to create a compelling value proposition for the end user. The truth is that both the digital world and the physical one are indispensable parts of life and business. The real transformation that is taking place today is not the replacement of one by the other – it is the marriage of the two into combinations that create wholly new sources of value. pi Strategy Consulting calls this phenomenon “pe-commerce” – short for physical and electronic commerce – we think it is likely to reshape not only the way people live, but the way companies operate.

Illustration: Internet

Some of the global leading players have already made this realisation and are re-orienting their business strategy accordingly. Let's take the undisputed poster child of e-commerce success, Amazon, as a case in point. The Wall Street Journal in October 2014 reported that Amazon will be opening its first physical retail store in New York. By utilising its physical sites as distribution centers, Amazon can deliver products to some customers even more quickly and therefore compete more directly with other brick-and-mortar outlets. Same-day delivery, and ordering online and picking up at the store are ideas that are really catching on, and Amazon can be at the forefront of this industry-wide shift.
eBay's United Kingdom operations have launched a program with a partner, Argos, whereby customers can order eBay goods online and pick them up in Argos stores. Over time, this service will be made available at any of the 650 Argos stores across the country.
Such shifts into pe-commerce are beginning in South Asia as well. Flipkart, India's largest e-commerce venture, has announced the launch of a number of physical retail stores. India's leading travel sites Makemytrip and Yatra havephysical presences. Makemytrip launched its first retail store in 2012 and has expanded to 20 some outlets across India. Yatra has as many as 40 franchisee outlets and is planning another 100.

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pi Strategy Consulting analysis has revealed three primary reasons for the big shift to pe-commerce.
The first reason is market size and market opportunity of the physical world. According to US Government census data, out of an estimated USD 1.1 trillion in U.S. retail sales in the second quarter of 2014, only 75 billion, or 6.4 percent, of total retail sales came from e-commerce. The story is similar in India, where retail is a whopping USD 490 billion market but only 10 percent of that is organised. And, according to ZDNet estimates, online is a tiny 0.02 percent of that organised retail total (i.e. USD 3 billion), with a 50 percent growth rate. In other words, despite the rapid growth rate of the e-commerce market, the lion's share of retail sales is still done within traditional physical stores. This is predominantly why the large traditional e-commerce players are foraying into the pe-commerce domains. They want a slice of the (much) bigger pie.
The second reason is distribution network. A critical success factor for e-commerce is fast and reliable delivery of products purchased online. An online retailer may have a wide selection of products, another may offer very low prices, and yet another player may offer great after-sales support. But all of them need to ensure that the products they sell online are delivered to the buyer on time. Physical presence opens up the opportunity to leverage retail outlets as distribution centers. This allows the retailer to bring the product closer to the customer.
The third reason is touch and feel. More hands-on experiences lead to more sales. Most of the products sold online are non-digital. They are physical products: a saree, a pair of shoes, a book, a mobile phone, etc. Seeing, touching, fitting, feeling – any of these things are important parts of the decision to buy. Think of the last time you bought any of these products. Did you purchase them from an online store or from a physical store? Would you be (could you be) equally comfortable buying those products from either of those two types of stores? Of the products I listed above, the mobile phone is an electronic product. And yet, even for electronic products such as a mobile phone, the physical dimension is a very important factor in the purchase decision. Take Apple for example. Apple found unprecedented success with its mobile device sales by combining an online retail presence with physical retail stores. According to market research firm eMarketer, Apple leads the physical retail marketplace with the highest sales per square foot of any other US-based retail store, with an average of USD 4,550 in sales per square foot.
Even when we do buy some of these products online, our past physical experiences with the products weigh heavily on our purchase decision. My wife and I order meals through Foodpanda sometimes. Every time we order food through this e-commerce service, we order from restaurants where we have had dinners in person in the past. The firsthand experience we had at those restaurants (quality of service, ambience, and of course quality of food) has influenced our decisions, either consciously or subconsciously. Our experience is not that uncommon.
Real value is created when the electronic and physical experiences are seamlessly integrated in the form of pe-commerce. Studies show that a customer who shops both online and in physical stores generates five times the profit of someone who shops only online. The integration can happen in many ways. Stores can be used as distribution centers. Items bought at stores can be shipped direct to buyers. Online orders can be fulfilled from stores when an item is out of stock in online warehouses. Items bought online can be picked up at stores. But such levels of integration require a lot of analysis and planning. Without it, we could be building services that do not enjoy high rates of adoption. The integration also requires considerable investments. But the payoff can be significant too. Macy's, one of the largest physical retail chains in the US, invested nearly USD 200 million in macys.com in 2006/2007. Between 2010 and 2013, its stock price rose steadily, increasing 43 percent in 2013 alone (compared to an increase of 28 percent in the S&P 500 index during the same period).
The pe-commerce concept makes even more sense for Bangladesh. pi Strategy Consulting analysis indicates that most of the transactions that are categorised as e-commerce in Bangladesh involve cash-on-delivery. We estimate this to be about 80 percent of the total transactions today.
One reason for such high percentage of payments being made through cash-on-delivery is of course the limited availability of electronic payment mechanisms in our country. On one hand, less than one-third the population has formal bank accounts, and a smaller percentage of those with bank accounts have credit cards that can be used for online purchases. On the other hand, despite the hoopla surrounding mobile banking, when you consider the facts that the vast majority (over three-fourth) of the mobile banking transactions are over-the-counter (OTC) transactions, and that less than one-tenth of the registered users are real, active end-users, you quickly see the limited prospect of using mobile banking wallets for e-commerce. This is why debit cards, credit cards and mobile banking wallets collectively constitute at best 20% of the e-commerce payments today.
The other more critical reason for high percentage of cash-on-delivery transactions in e-commerce today is our lack of trust in the e-commerce vendors. When you cannot fully trust a vendor, you want them to bring the product to you first, make sure it is what was advertised, and only then make the payment. Our analysis indicates that a considerable percentage of those who have the ability to use electronic payments for e-commerce purchases, choose not to use electronic payments specifically to offset this trust dimension.
Would the adoption of a pe-commerce strategy really make a difference? I certainly think it would. Why do we buy products from a newly opened corner store without really thinking as much about trust? Surely some of the new online stores deserve the same level of trust from us. But we find it more difficult to trust an online store than a physical store. This seems to be true even if the online store was selling better quality products compared to the physical store. Why is that?
First, there's something about the fact that one is physical while the other is not that influences our behavior. We know exactly where the physical store is. There is actually a person we are interacting with when we are purchasing. If we have issues with the product, we know where to go and who to talk to so that we can sort things out. We perceive the combination of these experiences as trust.
Second, the physical store, by definition, satisfies our inherent desire to touch and feel a product before we finalise a purchase decision. This helps both the buyer and the seller. For the buyer, it provides some interaction with the product and helps in the decision-making process. For the seller, it helps to close the sale. When you buy a light bulb at a store, the shopkeeper tests the bulb in your presence, you are happy it works, the shopkeeper is happy he has demonstrated it works, and you walk away a happy customer and the shopkeeper has made a sale with reduced likelihood of returns. The story is the same for many other products.
Fortunately for traditional e-commerce players, this equation works both ways. There are a number of advantages of an online store that a physical presence alone cannot beat. Lower inventory costs, lower operating costs, wider variety of products and wider customer reach are but only a few examples. So the newly opened corner store in the previous example may be in a better position to meet the trust issue, but there are many other value creation opportunities it could monetise if it also had an online e-commerce presence.
It is not physical or electronic. It is physical and electronic. It is time e-commerce grows up to become pe-commerce. It is time we realise we are humans after all.

The writer is Managing Partner at pi Strategy Consulting, a firm that specialises in helping client organisations with growth initiatives at the confluence of strategy and innovation.