Ahmed Imran, Phd student of e-Governance, National University of Australia, said, “Exclusively we should not address e-Governance as a part of donor funded project. A holistic view is needed here to move forward. e-Governance is not just maintaining some websites and we have to know the landscape of it is more wide.” Research subject of Ahmed Imran is e-Governance in the least develop countries. He further said, “At the time of facing problem unfortunately we see the top part of iceberg but do not want to extend our eyes to the bottom of it. We need a cultural shift towards adaptation of e-governance and we have to remove
traditional thinking of last century. e-Governance is always related to transparency and tools of it can ensure accountability if sincere people look after the implementation of e-governance. Sorry to say, some questions are on the rise about the honesty of the
some vital persons who are taking responsibility to run e-Governance projects.” Mostafa Jobbar, President of Bangladesh Computer Samity, noted, “Digital government is the next stage
of e-Governance. I think long before we should have introduced e-Governance to the country. Bureaucracy is one of the bearers to take the country towards the modernisation. Lack of IT literacy among bureaucrats is hampering the progress of e-Governance. It is hard to change those people who are keeping the keys of
changing of our society.”

The designer of Bijoy Software continued, “People have right to know every thing, only by technology people can access information instantly. There is a lack of transparency in preparing voter list, still we do not know how our government gave assignment to companies for preparing voter list. Election Commission is using 10000 laptops with Bijoy Software for composing voter particulars. But they are not paying money for each Bijoy Software. A government should show examples in
protecting intellectual property rights in their functions.”

AKM Samsudoha, President of Dohatec, said, “At first all ministries should come under e-Governance and that government high officials who have sound knowledge about it will be given assignment of it. Their inadequate knowledge on technology is messing up some of e-Governance projects. Private sector should be encouraged and come up with innovative ideas for implementing e-Governance.”Dohatec recently developed data duplication detecting software for voter list. The President of it further
went on, “Information technology is purely related to economics and business, thus we need a big budget from the government to develop best infrastructure of e-Governance or digital government- whatever we say. Unfortunately we saw our previous finance ministers did not realise the economics of IT in their several budget deliveries. For the sake of better e-Governance adaptation we have to study the e-Governance models of other countries. Very urgently we need to focus on engineering and mathematics education to increase the calibre of our students.”

The software entrepreneur again said, “Faster implementation of Intellectual Property Acts can encourage us to grow up. Our software bears special value because our products are popular in the offices of some developed countries. We have to proudly say
our one of software engineers recently got Oscar Prize.”Dr. Hafiz MD. Hasan Babu, Former Chairman, Computer Science Department of Dhaka University, said, “It is a fact that so far we failed to grip the real essence of IT. There is no co-ordination among the projects of IT and e-Governance. Every thing is scattered and thus we do not know what others are doing in the periphery of
their works.

The computer scientist is also working as a consultant of e-Governance project in the Supreme Court. He continued, “Computer experts are becoming consultants of some e-Governance projects and they work on the basis of their knowledge and experiences. Naturally they do not have every kind of knowledge, so they need help of experts from different disciplines. Actually success of e-Governance belongs to the well
co-ordinated efforts.”

Karar Mahmudul Hasan, Former Secretary, Ministry of Science and ICT, said, “Co-operation among the ministries are needed. Rivalry within some ministries is disturbing our progress. It is very ridiculous to be jealous when another ministry will get a big fund
from budget? We must be more cordial towards the development and friendly efforts are required.

Rafiqual Islam Rowly, President of BASIS; Tarique M Barkatullah, Senior System Analyst of Bangladesh Computer Council; Mohammad Ali, Consultant of SICT Project; S K Abul Hashem, Managing Director of IECB and Dr. Kazi Marful Islam, e-Governance expert, A 2 I Programme, Chief Adviser Office also attended as
discussants.

M A Haque Anu, President of BIJF, said, “ Details and recommendations of the roundtable discussion will be uploaded on our website and we will try to send the recommendation of the roundtable discussion to offices of our IT policy makers.”

The roundtable discussion was moderated by Shahidul K K Shuvra, member of BIJF and IT page editor of The Independent.