Digital Equity

Designed from bottom-up, Digital Bangladesh was about delivering solutions that would help the masses, those without internet, those without smartphones, and help bridge that digital divide - one which undoubtedly still exists and threatens to widen in the new normal as the world continues to struggle to make COVID-19 a thing of the past.

Building forward better, Innovative Bangladesh Vision 2041 requires an uncompromising and relentless focus on ensuring Digital Equity - the idea that everyone should have the availability, accessibility and affordability of information technology needed for full participation in our society, democracy, and economy.

Aggregated, citizens of Bangladesh have saved over $16 billion, nearly 12 billion workdays, and 7 billion visits in the last decade due to the more efficient delivery of public services alone.

Thanks to an array of last mile service delivery innovations that were designed to be citizen-centric and developed with a bottom-up approach, such as the 8,280+ Digital Centres throughout the country, one Bangladesh National Portal enabling citizens unified access to thousands of government offices, or ‘333’ - the National Services Access Helpline that enabled all citizens to stay connected with their government during the strict COVID-19 lockdowns.

These different layers of the multi-channel, multi-platform digital service access architecture were designed to promote inclusion. A citizen who has no form of digital connectivity, not even a mobile phone, can avail government services from the nearest Digital Centre. A citizen who only has a mobile (bar or feature) phone (which is two-thirds of Bangladeshis), can simply dial ‘333’ to seek information and ask for services. If someone has a phone that can access the internet, they can get information from the Bangladesh National Portal website which hosts 51,528+ government offices under one umbrella. Increasingly, citizens are also able to access all government services from the myGov App.