BSS :
Tania Ferdous Tarin, a university student, was worried about the protection of her elderly father amid the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic.
She wanted to get her father vaccinated and subsequently found a very simple and easy way to this end. She registered her father’s name through the ‘Surokkha App’ and received a massage within a short time. Then her father was inoculated in the right time without any hassle.
The ICT Division of the government has developed the ‘Surokkha App’ as part of its endeavor to ensure digitization in every sector aiming to attain the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030.
“My father took two doses of vaccine without any hassle.
I want to express my gratitude to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. My father has been suffering from kidney ailments for long.
So, I was very anxious about my father,” said Tania in a tone of satisfaction.
Not only Covid vaccination, in line with the SDGs, the ICT Division is ensuring digitization in every sector of the country. In the pandemic period, the division is also providing tele-health services through a2i for the patients.
Even at late night, people are receiving the service.
During the lockdown, e-governance, online meeting, e-commerce and online cattle market have become very popular which indicates the progress in achieving SDGs.
Talking to BSS, SDG Focal Point of the ICT Division Nahid Sultana Mallik said the ICT Division is working as lead ministry for achieving the targets of 9.C and 17.8.
The division is also working as co-lead ministry to achieve the target of 9.B, she added.
Nahid Sultana Mallik, also a deputy secretary of the ICT Division, said the SDG Tracker is helping the division to evaluate its achievement, identify its barriers and set the next steps.
“Digital Bangladesh is one of the 10 special initiatives of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Moreover, to achieve the SDGs by 2030, the government has already implemented different projects to ensure modern facilities even in rural areas.
Through Union Digital Center (UDC), people in remote areas are now receiving all sorts of facilities at their doorsteps,” she added.
She informed that many government officials worked from home during the lockdown and this was possible due to the introduction of e-filing.
The objective of the tracker is to facilitate the tracking progress against each goal and target, improve situation analysis and performance monitoring and enable predictive analysis for achieving the goals within the set time-frame, he added.
He said two major components of SDG Tracker are SDG Portal and Dashboard.
The SDG Portal enables policymakers, government agencies, private sector, civil society organizations, international organizations, academia, researchers and the citizens to track year on year progress against each target and to create required visualizations.
On the other hand, SDG Dashboards facilitate individual ministries or divisions and agencies to consolidate available data for each SDG and compare it visually against performance thresholds, he added.
He said that the resulting dashboards highlight areas where a ministry needs to make the greatest progress towards achieving the goals by 2030.
“The government of Bangladesh is committed to sustain the momentum of MDGs and lead by example again in case of SDGs. National plans and actions are also directed towards this commitment.
The SDG Tracker (www.sdg.gov.bd) is supporting to drive these actions in the right direction,” he added.
Tito said by keeping everyone on the same platform to achieve the SDGs, all organizations are able to monitor the position of themselves and their affiliates.
In this way, the ministries can easily know their position and they are not facing any difficulty in setting realistic new targets, he added.
He said the tracker also provides assistance in monitoring the progress of implementation of each objective through multiple visualization schemes.
He informed that so far, according to the BBS calendar, there are 11 updated data-containing SDG indicators on the SDG tracker.
All of these 11 indicators have been provided, approved and published in the tracker, he said.
He also informed that already nine agencies have updated their data on the tracker and a total of 581 government officials have been trained on tracker.
Tito mentioned that not only digitization, Bangladesh is achieving remarkable success in all indicators of the SDGs and so, world communities are lauding the country.
As per the Sustainable Development Report 2021, Bangladesh is among the three top performers in sustainable development.
Bangladesh, Afghanistan and Cote d’Ivoire have progressed the most on the SDGs index score since the adoption of the 2030 global agenda in 2015.
