Foreign minister AH Mahmood Ali and state minister for ICT Junaid Ahmed Palak are seen along with others at the inaugural session of a two-day CICA international conference organised by Bangladesh Computer Council at the Radisson Hotel in Dhaka on Friday.
Foreign minister AH Mahmood Ali has advocated for pursuing ‘digital diplomacy’, and sought a greater cooperation in digital technology sector among CICA member countries to implement more effective digital governments.
‘We need to pursue digital diplomacy among our CICA governments,’ he said while addressing the inaugural session of a two-day international conference in Dhaka as the chief guest on Friday.
Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia is a multi-national forum for enhancing cooperation towards promoting peace, security and stability in Asia.
Bangladesh Computer Council organised the CICA international conference on Digital Government at the Radisson Blue Hotel in the city.
The foreign minister said many CICA member countries were running ahead with their cutting edge and state-of-the-art digital technology, supported by their high quality education, innovation and investments in research and development.
‘There’re many countries who’re still lagging behind. That’s why we’ve to work together to reduce the digital gaps and implement effective digital governments in Asia,’ he said.
Mahmood said the member states have the power, the potentials, resources and good intentions to achieve progress and prosperity together. ‘Now we need initiatives to cooperate with and bring our policymakers, technology experts, academia, and digital industry leaders to venture together and explore suitable solutions.’
He laid emphasis on sharing resources, education, skills and knowledge and transfer technology to build sustainable digital governments in Asia and with a view to implementing confidence-building measures in digital sectors, the spirit of the CICA process.
Mahmood said most Asian countries and members of CICA process had adopted digital technology transformation in their governments as the platform of their operations. ‘I’m very proud to state that Bangladesh has also successfully adopted and implemented digital government as its mainframe enabler of administrative process and public service delivery mechanism.’
‘We’re now in the 2nd phase of implementation of Digital Bangladesh programme during Sheikh Hasina’s second consecutive term and third term as the prime minister of the country,’ he said.
The foreign minister said the conference was a good example of digital diplomacy efforts among CICA member states.
He hoped that the delegates, policymakers, digitals experts and digital corporate leader who are participating in this two-day conference would engage in meaningful deliberations and would be able to come up with comprehensive solutions to the issues related to successful transformation of digital governments in CICA member countries.
The international conference is being held in Bangladesh with support from the ICT Division and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in fulfilment of commitment to CICA.
State minister for ICT Junaid Ahmed Palak, ICT Division secretary Shyam Sunder Sikder, Dean of Diplomatic Corps ambassador Mahmood Izzat, a member state of CICA and former president of BCC Sayed Ashraful Islam were also present.
Source: New Age
