The e-Government component of the Leveraging ICT for Growth, Employment and Governance Project (LICT) implemented by the Bangladesh Computer Council (BCC) has been responsible for:

• Building shared infrastructure for IT hosting
• Creating shared IT governance policies, standards and structures
• Capacity building on e-Government skills

Building shared infrastructure for IT hosting

Bangladesh Computer Council is managing the only Tier 3-certified data centre in the country, providing application and database hosting services for government agencies, together with 24x7 support provided through an online helpdesk, telephone or e-mail.

Around 200 government entities have been using the BCC data centre to host their websites; 60 of them have their email services managed by the BCC. The centre has also been hosting multiple web applications, such as the online Birth and Death Registration System.

Any government agency or constitutional body of Bangladesh can host their applications, databases and websites on BCC infrastructure. Clients who decide to make use of the National Data Centre have full access to their applications or databases and remain responsible for their development and administration. At the same time, hosting data on BBC premises brings multiple advantages:

• Added security: BCC employs a full-time Computer Incident Response Team, proactively preventing and quickly responding to any suspected security breaches. The National Data Centre will be the only data centre across the government to be ISO-27001 (information security management) and ISO-20000 (information technology service management)—certified.
• Ease of expansion.Having increased the data centre capacity, the BCC can flexibly assign additional resources to the applications it hosts. As a result, clients do not need to plan for purchase of new equipment while their needs for storage space or computing power grow.
• Multiple technologies supported. BCC cloud services support Linux and Windows environment with MS SQL Server, Oracle, IBM DB2 and MySQL databases. The support staff is fully qualified and certified in each of these operating systems and database technologies.
• Reliable connectivity. BCC provides network connectivity to multiple agencies in and outside Dhaka, ensuring that cloud-hosted applications and shared IT assets are accessible without interruption.
• Keeping your IT staff focused. Since the BCC team takes care of physical management of the data centre and incident response, IT teams employed by government agencies will have more time to spend on their core activities—developing and improving the IT applications and web services that their institutions need.

Additionally, BCC is launching a government Certification Authority (CA), providing public key infrastructure (PKI) for ministries and government agencies. A common government certification authority will ensure that government applications that use encryption are singed with a trusted key and are no longer required to use certification services provided by private for-profit companies. That should result in more secure web applications and more efficient management of government IT resources.

Hosting your applications at the National Data Centre

Any government agency can contact the BCC to arrange hosting their applications and databases at the National Data Centre. There is currently no charge for Application hosting. A memorandum of understanding with service level agreement (SLA) will have to be signed. For more information, contact:

National Data Center

Bangladesh Computer Council

Tel: 02-55006840

Email: datacenter@bcc.net.bd

Web: www.bcc.gov.bd

Creating shared IT governance policies, standards and structures

BCC has been leading the development of the National Enterprise Architecture, including the e-Government Interoperability Framework, setting the standards for data management and data exchange between different e-government applications. More information on National Enterprise Architecture can be found on the website: nea.bcc.gov.bd.

Capacity building on e-Government skills

Up to date, BCC has provided training to hundreds of around 250 government officers, who completed courses in Bangladesh, Singapore and India. In particular BCC cybersecurity-trained and certified staff regularly train officials from other government agencies, strengthening good practices in the area of information security. Among other qualifications, BCC staff have completed training on National Enterprise Architecture, e-Governance, implementation of ISO-27001 and ISO-20000, ethical hacking, vulnerability assessment and penetration testing. The have also been actively participating in the Asia Pacific Regional Forum on e-Government, Smart Cities and Digital Societies for Sustainable Development.

Thanks to 800-node videoconferencing network maintained by the Council, training can also be provided remotely. Tailor-made courses can thus be delivered to staff based in districts and sub-districts of Bangladesh, without requiring them to travel to Dhaka. Finally, a new state-of-the art computer lab will be inaugurated on December 15 by the ICT Adviser to the Prime Minister.