Dohatec makes mark in software business

A Bangladesh software firm is in talks with about 10 other countries to carry out tasks of voter enrolment and people identification.
Dohatec, the software developer for Bangladesh's 80 million-voter ID registration and biometric matching, has made a mark as a leading software company in the world.
The company is now negotiating with election officials of Somalia, Mauritius, Nigeria, Kenya, Congo, Papua New Guinea and Mongolia to develop their voter identification card and biometric matching software.
“Election officials from 10 countries contacted us. Some high officials even visited us to examine our activities. We are communicating with them to make sure we are included in the proposed pool of companies for the task,” Luna Shamsuddoha, chairman of Dohatec, told The Daily Star.
The software for voter enrolment and people identification is not new to the world but what makes Dohatec different is that it compiled it for about 80 million voter data, which is massive.
“We faced problems in implementing the voter registration for such a large data base. We solved the problems in stages by making the software cutting edge,” she said.
"It is prestigious for Bangladesh that Dohatec is competing with leading global IT solution providers. Our company has recently participated in the Philippines National Voter Registration and Biometric matching project, where we lost to Japanese NEC Global, a world leader in IT solutions."
Luna said Dohatec's main strength is that donors are strongly recommending this software, as it has a long association with multilateral donors.
On the expenses of such a project, the company chairman refraining from revealing all says hundreds of million dollars are associated with such projects.
Dohatec provided Bangladesh Army with the voter enrolment and people's identification software in 2007 with prototype comprising digital voter entry form, including photograph and fingerprint captures, based on laptops equipped with Microsoft operating systems.
The Bangladesh Election Commission made the system public on April 08, 2007.
Earlier in 2001-02, Dohatec developed the United States Postal Service's (USPS) online mail tracking system with Harte-Hanks Inc, applying technology to bring value added information based solutions. Dohatec's online mail tracking system, is a fully web enabled large database system capable of handling millions of records is an innovative product track automated bar coded mail through USPS facilities.
Dohatec has been developing the World Bank's World Development Report (WDR) on Dohatec Acrobook every year since 2002. All contents of the reports are fully indexed and cross-referenced for easy searching across the volumes in the archives.
Besides, Dohatec drew the attention of software giant Microsoft for its outstanding contribution in the hi-tech domain and became a Microsoft Gold Software Certified Partner in 2006.

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