State Minister for ICT Division Zunaid Ahmed Palak yesterday said a digital university will be built to promote IT education aimed at creating skilled IT people as part of the country’s massive digitization campaign.”We will set up a digital university beside Kaliakoir Hi-Tech Park to build a knowledge-driven economy,” he told the closing ceremony of a two-day international event on “Bdren Management, operation, application and services” at Nabab Nawab Ali Chowdhury Bhaban of Dhaka University (DU) here.Chairman of University Grants Commission ( UGC) of Bangladesh Prof Dr AK Azad Chowdhury, DU Pro-Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Nasreen Ahmed and Senior Operation Officers of World Bank Dr Md Mokhlesur Rahman, among others, addressed the function with UGC Member Prof Dr Md Aktar Hossain in the chair.Palak said, “The digital university will be a specialized one. The university will offer degrees on different subjects related to modern technology of the present changing world.”He said it is expected that the university would make significant contributions to resolving unemployment problem as curriculum of the university would be designed as per the demand for new job market.In line with its plan to build Digital Bangladesh as chartered out in the ‘Vision-2021’, the government put thrust on the use of ICT for improving productivity, governance, service delivery and on the development of IT industry, Palak said.Referring to different steps taken on ICT, he said the establishment of 4,547 Union Digital Centres (UDCs), 321 pourasabha digital centres and 401 ward digital centres under city corporations has transformed some important public services into online services.Launching of national web portal containing 25,000 websites of government bodies in various tiers on June 23, 2014 is an another step toward ensuring the rights to information of public, he added.Palak said the country received many prestigious awards-South South Award, South South Cooperation Visionary Award 2014, World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) 2014 Prize, Global ICT Excellence Award 2014 — for its outstanding contribution to ICT during the last six years.The prestigious awards conferred by internationally reputed organizations recognizing Bangladesh contribution to ICT have enhanced the image of the country in the international arena and sent a positive message to the investors to invest in the country.Prof Azad said the country witnessed a remarkable progress in the field of ICT in the past couple of years as the present government has implemented many effective and time-befitting programmes as part of building a digital Bangladesh by 2021.”We can take advantage of ICT to acquire knowledge to make competent workforce to supplement the efforts of the government for building a technologically advanced country,” he added.
