Digital signature important for digitisation drive

Panel of guests at the seminar held by BCC titled Commencing Digital Signature

Digital society aims to make life easier by saving time and energy and stopping misappropriation in the everyday life. Moreover, the systems of tax return, the filing of information in the government offices, procurement and tender, applying for any license can be introduced with electronic or digital signature and digital certificate to transform Bangladesh into digital, the participants said at a seminar in the city recently.
Bangladesh Computer Council (BCC) held the seminar on Commencing Digital Signature following the Information and Communication (amend) Act 2009 on its premises.
In the seminar, keynote speaker Munir Hasan, also consultant of access to information project under prime minister's office described the process of digital signature and said it is a mathematical system to confirm the identity of the information provider. In this system, the information remains absolutely uniform at the end. Moreover, it is used in monetary or any other secret transaction through Internet or other network.
He also said the government should monitor the role of digital signature assignee organisations and thereby make the e-commerce easier and can stop illegal money transfer, unauthorised disclosure of government information while transaction and the cyber crime.
Public private partnership is important to accomplish the digital signature project, Munir Hasan added.
Dr Yeafesh Osman, state minister for science and information and communication technology (ICT) ministry lauded the initiative while addressing the seminar as chief guest and said traditionally it needs plenty of time to finish any the government file work. But once the digital signature system is introduced, time will be saved and the authenticity will be confirmed.
The government officials are needed to be motivated to achieve the target of digital Bangladesh along with the new dimension of digital signature, said AKM Abdul Awal Majumder, science and ICT ministry secretary said. He also stressed on skilled and trained manpower for this project.
Earlier, Md Mahfuzur Rahman, BCC additional secretary and executive director spoke in the inaugural session. Among others, Dr Md Zahidur Rahman, professor of computer science department of Jahangirnagar University and Md Abul Mansur, consultant of CPTU were present in the seminar as discussants. A question-answer session was also conducted with the participants in the seminar.