Digitisation of all ministries, government organisations and directorates is well on course, as is evident from the completion of the first phase of the National Enterprise Architecture (NEA) project before the scheduled date. The first-phase of the NEA project, aimed at establishing uniform operation of the IT system of all government entities, was scheduled for completion in December this year. But officials in the government’s Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Division told The Independent that the work had been completed in mid-October. The project had been initiated under the World Bank (WB)-financed project 'Leveraging ICT for Growth, Employment and Governance (LICT)', which was executed by the Bangladesh Computer Council (BCC) under the ICT Division. Md Rezaul Karim, LICT project director, told The Independent that in the first phase, UK-based Ernst & Young had finished collecting data from various government organisations and was developing a standard uniform system. “Collection of data from different government entities was the tedious part because all the ministries, organisations and directorates have established separate IT systems by using their own software solutions. Now, this part is over and we look forward to a uniform system,” he added.
Rezaul Karim said the development of the new system would take around two years. “By the end of this year, we'll call for a tender for the second phase of the NEA project, in which a software developer company will be appointed to develop the uniform system applicable to all government entities,” he added.
Explaining the benefits of the NEA, Rezaul Karim said it would revolutionise e-governance. “Public data generated by government entities cannot be used by others due to lack of seamless integration and interoperability of the IT system, as all government entities use different software packages at presen,” he added.
 “This is where the NEA steps in. It means all the IT systems would be based on a single framework, enabling a seamless exchange of information among organisations,” he said. Shyam Shunder Sikdar, secretary of the ICT Division, said the purpose of establishing the NEA was to bridge the gap between policy and implementation. “In practice, the challenge for government institutions is that many e- government initiatives require information exchange through the networks of various government organisations. The NEA is going to ensure that,” he observed. This project will unlock data and ensure seamless data flow among government organisations, said the secretary, adding that Ernst & Young was now collecting data from them and working on a uniform system. “After the data collection, the core system will be developed,” said Sikdar.
BCC executive director SM Ashraful Islam said, “Most public institutions today manage technology in 'stove pipes' or 'islands', with individual institutions having their own channels, web pages and supporting infrastructure.” He also said that a true digital government, which Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina aspires to establish, requires a tremendous amount of central coordination to yield system-wide adaptation and interoperability among different government entities. The NEA would do just that through a single software solution, he added.
Dr Liakot Ali, director of the Institute of Information and Communication Technology (BUET), said the idea of the NEA suggests that government institutions should not simply consider their own IT infrastructure when structuring new e-governance initiatives. “Individual institutions in government must comply with a general IT infrastructural set-up so that guidelines for organisational and technical interoperability can be followed at the national level”, he added.
Ali also said that in many sections of the IT, there is a pervasive belief that public sector initiatives lag behind those of the private sector. But this is certainly not true when it comes to enterprise architecture, he added. “Architectural compliance is now mandatory for US federal government projects. Different government entities now use similar software model so that information exchange among them remains flawless,” he noted.