IT/ITES Component Overview

The objective of this component is to increase the competitiveness of Bangladesh’s IT/ITES industry for economic growth, export diversification, and employment creation. The global IT/ITES industry has had a significant impact in developing countries such as India, Philippines, and Egypt; as it creates mass employment in higher value-jobs for youth and women. It is also a transformative investment that builds new economy industry and jobs; and contributes directly to exports, economic diversification, and GDP growth. Various studies on IT/ITES have found that Bangladesh has significant competitive advantage globally due to its large pool of available talents and significantly lower costs. However, there are challenges in terms of skills, awareness and perception of the country, and IT/ITES-specific infrastructure that needs priority assistance for catalyzing the growth of the industry. Hence this component aims to address these key issues. Its design is based on extensive dialogue with the government, industry and other local stakeholders, and various assessments and recommendations already carried out in the country.

The objective of the skills development activities is to develop a pool of 34,000 IT/ITES human resources of sufficient quality to support the growth of the IT/ITES industry in Bangladesh. Hence this component will develop various skills sets based on the needs of the industry - including technical, soft, and middle management skills. In addition, it will develop quality skills through assessment and certifications mechanisms, and program priority skills to meet the immediate needs of the IT/ITES industry.Bangladesh currently does not have a significant position in the global IT/ITES market for IT or ITES competency, or domain specialization. It would therefore be important to adopt a multi-pronged strategy based on these considerations:

• Differentiated skill requirements of each segment: The skills development component will take into account the differing skill needs of both the IT services and IT-enabled services segments, and the areas of overlap in skill requirements or shared skills. These differing skill needs will be revalidated during the assessment and planning process, and the typical skill needs are described below: --IT services segment: e.g., application development skills (technologies, programming languages, hardware etc.), application maintenance skills, software testing and quality assurance skills programming, software testing and product development / management skills --ITES segment (also referred as Business Process Outsourcing or “BPO”): e.g. foundational skills related to communication and handling of technology along with functional / domain expertise --Supervisory skills: Mid to high-level management or supervisory skills
• Demand/needs orientation: The component will build in significant industry participation to maximize industry inputs, and develop mechanisms that promote a needs-driven approach (e.g. partial subsidies for internships, industry-academia collaboration).
• Focus on ITES segment: The component will also place more emphasis on skills development for the ITES (or business process outsourcing [BPO]) segment. This segment has higher potential and is likely to be an important segment for Bangladesh in terms of potential youth employment. According to Everest research the sector is likely to grow globally from USD105-125 billion in revenues in 2010, to USD256-268 billion by 2016. In the same period, the number of offshore jobs is likely to double from 3.8 million people to 7.6 million.
• Partnerships for training delivery: The component will leverage extensively on partnerships between reputable and international training and certification providers globally; and the local industry and academia to build in local knowledge and needs. The skills required for working in the ITES segment are also more basic and generic, but will need to be supplemented by additional skills that would depend upon the specific nature of work (e.g. specific to process, industry, client, language, level of work, etc.). However, it is also noted that Bangladesh should develop their talent pool for IT in tandem with a talent pool for ITES. Among other reasons, there is a convergence trend that is resulting in a rapid blurring of boundaries between the segments. For example, in the recent past Dell bought Perot, HP acquired EDS and Xerox took over ACS. There is also an increasing realization that companies need to move subsequently to a full services play to grow their IT/ITES business. In India for example, five of the top 10 ITES companies in 2008-2009 were IT companies: TCS, IBM, Wipro, Infosys and HCL. The component also builds in gender considerations in its design. Women constitute a large part of the workforce in the ITES/BPO segment (for example women constituted 65 percent of the ITES workforce in the Philippines. The sector therefore affords an important opportunity for creating avenues of productive employment for a large number of women in Bangladesh. In addition skills for ITES are fungible across sectors and can therefore improve the quality of a wide range of services.
  
   

  Establish e-Government Technology Foundations Component Overview

  The prevailing governance status in Bangladesh continues to pose major challenges for the country’s economic growth and social development. Hence, this component will provide critical e-Government technological foundations for the country’s governance agenda for the years ahead, and build the human capacity leveraging technology for governance reforms

   

  e-Government refers to the use of ICT to transform government by making it more accessible, effective and accountable. It is a powerful tool for public administration reforms as it enables more efficient, effective, and participatory government; facilitates convenient government services and greater public access to information; and increases transparency and makes government more accountable to citizens. On a deeper level, e-Government opens up predominantly inward-looking structures of administrations toward a focus on services rendered and on delivery of results, fundamentally affecting the very processes by which these services are produced. In this way, e-Government allows administrative reform efforts to make dramatic, fundamental and radical changes in form, and not just changes in degree. These changes further reinforce other reforms, helping countries to better compete in the global economy by strengthening markets and individual choice which, in turn, promote economic growth and poverty reduction. The Government also recognizes the need to leverage ICT for governance, but the public agencies have systems and services that are largely silo-based, replicative, insufficiently secured, and do not leverage electronic services (e-Services) sufficiently in support of public sector reform efforts. Hence, this component will establish the critical e-Government technology foundations such as shared datacenter, interoperability framework, information security governance, and enterprise architecture; and build the capacity of IT-related personnel in the public sector.