Seven local ICT projects up for global awards

Seven ICT-related projects from Bangladesh got the nomination for this year's World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) awards.

The projects are: Hello 16123; the National Portal; the National Portal for Teachers; mHealth; Amaderdaktar (our doctor); Agriculture Helpline 27676, and Farmers Query Service. 

Their promotion to the final stage of the competition will largely rely on public votes, and the votes can be cast online until May 1, Zunaid Ahmed Palak, state minister for ICT, said at a press briefing at the office of Bangladesh Computer Council in the capital yesterday.

“All of these projects are good ones. It would be unfortunate if they fail to win awards just for the lack of votes.”

He said there are about 4.5 crore internet users in the country, and if all of them vote for the projects, it would not be hard to win the awards.

Winning an award as prestigious as this will also help in country branding, the minister said.

Although projects from Bangladesh have been nominated in four categories, voters will have to cast votes for one project in each of the 18 categories. Otherwise, the votes will not be counted, said ICT Secretary Shyam Sundor Sikder.

Kabir Bin Anwar, project director of the Access to Information programme under the Prime Minister's Office, said every internet user in Bangladesh should cast their votes, as opportunities such as this are hard to come by.

All of the speakers at the briefing talked about the complex process of voting and requested the media to raise awareness.

Hello 16123 is an agriculture call centre of Practical Bangladesh, an international non-governmental organisation. It provides fast and cheap agricultural solutions to farmers.

The National Portal is a gateway to 25,000 portals and websites of all government offices at union, upazila, district, division, directorate and ministry levels.

It promotes citizenry rights with regard to public information and services by providing a single window access.

The national portal for teachers allows the country's academics to develop contents for students.

mHealth, run by  Synesis IT, is a 24/7 mobile-based medical counselling and health information dissemination service that targets every resident in Bangladesh, primarily those residing in rural areas. Trained and registered physicians provide the service.

Since its launch in 2008, it has provided services to more than 1 crore people across the country, said Shohrab Ahmed Chowdhury, managing director of Synesis IT.

Amaderdaktar is run by mPower Social Enterprises. It is an ICT-based healthcare solution for the underserved rural communities.

Mobile agriculture helpline 27676 is run by Win Miaki, through which farmers get accurate and better fertiliser, seed, and pesticide recommendations.

mPower also runs another smartphone-based agriculture advisory service. 

Last year, the government's Union Information Service Centre project won the award.

Shameem Ahsan, president of Bangladesh Association for Software and Information Services, and Sami Ahmed, executive director of BASIS, also spoke.